The Later Years Of Thomas Hardy 1892 1928

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THE LATER YEARS

OF

THOMAS HARDY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK - BOSTON * CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, LIMITED

TORONTO

W'i/Hrs/w**}!^ ///v//?y;, yfi C/

THE LATER YEARS ,OF

THOMAS HARBY

1892, 192,8

BY

FLORENCE EMILY HARDY

THE

1930

COPYRIGHT, 1930,
BY FLORENCE EMILY HARDY

AH rights reserved no part of this

book may be reproduced in any form

without permission in writing from

the publisher.

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1930.

PRINTED pr THE mum STATES 01 AIORICA*

THE present volume forms the second and
concluding part of a biography^ the first
part being The Early Life of Thomas Hardy y
published in 1928.

CONTENTS

PART I
TESS, JUDE, AND THE END OF PROSE

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK, 1892: Aet. 5l~52 . . 3

CHAPTER II
VISITS AND INTERMITTENT WRITING, 1893: Aet. 52,-53 15

CHAPTER III
ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED, MUTILATED, AND RESTORED,

1894-1895: Aet. 53-55 28

CHAPTER IV
MORE ON "jUDE", AND ISSUE OF "THE WELL-BELOVED",

1896-1897: Aet. 55-57 46

PART II
VERSE, TO THE END OF "THE DYNASTS"

CHAPTER V
COLLECTING OLD POEMS AND MAKING NEW, 1897-1898:

Aet. 57-58 65

CHAPTER VI

"WESSEX POEMS" AND OTHERS, 1899-1900: Aet. 58-60 76

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE

"POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT ", AND OTHERS,

1901-1903 : Aet. 60-63 .88

CHAPTER VIII
PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS ", 1904-1905 : Aet. 63-65 1 03

CHAPTER IX

THE REMAINDER OF "THE DYNASTS ", 1906-1908: Aet.

65-67 117

PART III

"TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS",

"SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE", AND

"MOMENTS OF VISION"

CHAPTER X

DEATHS OF SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH, 1908-1909 I Aet.

67-69 131

CHAPTER XI
THE FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH, 1910 I Aet. 69-70 - 14!

CHAPTER XII
BEREAVEMENT, 1911-1912 : Aet. 70-72 . . . . 148

CHAPTER XIII

. REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE, AND WAR-WRITINGS,

1913-1914:^.72-74. ..... 156

CHAPTER XIV
WAR EFFORTS, DEATHS OF RELATIVES, AND "MOMENTS

OF VISION", 1915-1917; Aet. 74-77 . . , 167

CONTENTS ix

PART IV
LIFE'S DECLINE

CHAPTER XV

PAGE

REFLECTIONS ON POETRY, 1918: Aet. 77-78 . . . 183

CHAPTER XVI
POETICAL QUESTIONS : AND MELLSTO'CK CLUB-ROOM, 1918-

1919 : Aet. 78-79 189

CHAPTER XVII

"THE DYNASTS" AT OXFORD; HON. DEGREE; A DEPUTA-
TION; A CONTROVERSY, 1920: Aet. 79-80 . . 201

CHAPTER XVIII
SOME FAREWELLS, 1921-1925 : Aet. 80-85 . . . 221

CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST SCENE ........ 246

APPENDIX I ......... 267

APPENDIX II ......... 269

APPENDIX III 274

INDEX .......... 279

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Thomas Hardy, 1919. From a drawing by William

Strang, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery Frontispiece

Thomas Hardy's Study about 1900. From a photo-
graph by the Rev. T. Perkins .... Facing 76

Thomas Hardy, aged 60. From a photograph by

the Rev. T. Perkins "90

Thomas Hardy, c. 1908. From a photograph by

Walter Barnett " 132

Thomas Hardy, 1913. From a photograph by Olive

Edis "156

Mrs. Hardy, 1918. From a drawing by William

Strang, R.A. 160

Mr. and Mrs. Hardy at Max Gate, 1914. From a

photograph by E. O. Hopp6 . . . . " 167

Max Gate. View from the lawn, 1919. - . . " 192

Thomas Hardy, aged 80. From a photograph by

Walter Thomas " 202

"I Sometimes Think." Facsimile reproduction from

page of original MS. of Late Lyrics and Earlier . " 225

"He resolves to say no more." Facsimile reproduction
from page of original MS. of Winter Words.
Written 1927 " 262

Entrance to Stinsford Churchyard " 268

PARTI
TESS, JUDE, AND THE END OF PROSE

CHAPTER I

THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK
1892: Aet. 51-52

As Tess of the d'Urbervilles got into general circulation it
attracted an attention that Hardy had apparently not fore-
seen, for at the time of its publication he was planning
something of quite a different kind, according to an entry
he made :

"Title: * Songs of Five-and-Twenty Years'. Ar-
rangement of the songs : Lyric Ecstasy inspired by music
to have precedence."

However, reviews, letters, and other intelligence
speedily called him from these casual thoughts back to the
novel, which the tediousness of the alterations and restora-
tions had made him weary of. From the prefaces to later
editions can be gathered more or less clearly what hap-
pened to the book as, passing into great popularity, an
endeavour was made by some critics to change it to scan-
dalous notoriety the latter kind of clamour, raised by a
certain small section of the public and the press, being
quite inexplicable to the writer himself.

Among other curious results from the publication of
the book was that it started a rumour of Hardy's theo-
logical beliefs, which lived, and spread, and grew, so that
it was never completely extinguished. Near the end of
the story he had used the sentence, "The President of
the Immortals had finished his sport with Tess", and the
first five words were, as Hardy often explained to his

3

4 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1892

reviewers, but a literal translation of Aesch. Prom. 169 :
MdKaptov irpvravLs. The classical sense in which he had
used them is best shown by quoting a reply he wrote thirty
years later to some unknown critic who had said in an
article :

"Hardy postulates an all-powerful being endowed with
the baser human passions, who turns everything to evil
and rejoices in the mischief he has wrought;" another
critic taking up the tale by adding : "To him evil is not so
much a mystery, a problem, as the wilful malice of his
god."

Hardy's reply was written down but (it is believed), as
in so many cases with him, never posted ; though I am
able to give it from the rough draft :

"As I need hardly inform any thinking reader, I do
not hold, and never have held, the ludicrous opinions here
assumed to be mine which are really, or approximately,
those of the primitive believer in his man-shaped tribal
god. And in seeking to ascertain how any exponent of
English literature could have supposed that I held them
I find that the writer of the estimate has harked back to a
passage in a novel of mine, printed many years ago, in
which the forces opposed to the heroine were allegorized
as a personality (a method not unusual in imaginative
prose or poetry) by the use of a well-known trope, ex-
plained in that venerable work, Campbell 's Philosophy of
Rhetoric y as "one in which life, perception, activity, design,
passion, or any property of sentient beings, is attributed
to things inanimate 1 .

"Under this species of criticism if an author were to
say ' Aeolus maliciously tugged at her garments, and tore
her hair in his wrath', the sapient critic would no doubt
announce that author's evil creed to be that the wind is *a
powerful being endowed with the baser human passions',
etc., etc.

"However, I must put up with it, and say as Parrha-

AET. 51-52 THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK 5

sius of Ephesus said about his pictures : There is nothing
that men will not find fault with/'

deep impression produced on the general and un-
critical public by the story was the occasion of Hardy *s
receiving strange letters some from husbands whose
experiences had borne a resemblance to that of Angel
Clare, though more, many more, from wives with a past
like that of Tess, but who had not told their husbands, and
asking for his counsel under the burden of their conceal-
mentj| Some of these were educated women of good posi-
tion, and Hardy used to say the singular thing was that
they should have put themselves in the power of a stranger
by these revelations (their names having often been given,
though sometimes initials at a post-office only), when they
would not trust persons nearest to them with their secret.
However, they did themselves no harm, he would add,
for though he was unable to advise them, he carefully
destroyed their letters, and never mentioned their names,
or suspected names, to a living soul. He owed them that
much, he said, for their trust in his good faith. A few,
too, begged that he would meet them privately, or call on
them, and hear their story instead of their writing it. He
talked the matter over with his friend, Sir Francis Jeune,
who had had abundant experience of the like things in
the Divorce Court, where he presided, and who recom-
mended him not to meet the writers alone, in case they
should not be genuine. He himself, he said, also got such
letters, but made it a rule never to notice them. Nor did
Hardy, though he sometimes sadly thought that they

came from sincere women in trouble. *

. -^

Tess of the d* Urbermlles was also the cause of Hardy -s
meeting a good many people of every rank during that
spring, summer, and onwards, and of opportunity for
meeting a good many more if he had chosen to avail him-
self of it. Many of the details that follow concerning his

6 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1892

adventures in the world of fashion at dinner-parties,
crushes, and other social functions, which Hardy himself
did not think worth recording, have been obtained from
diaries kept by the late Mrs. Hardy.

It must be repeated that his own notes on these meet-
ings were set down by him as private memoranda only ;
and that they, or some of them, are reproduced here to
illustrate what contrasting planes of existence he moved
in vibrating at a swing between the artificial gaieties of
a London season and the quaintnesses of a primitive
rustic life,

^Society remarks on Tess were curious and humorous.
Strangely enough Lord Salisbury, with whom Hardy had
a slight acquaintance, was a supporter of the story. Also :
"The Duchess of Abercorn tells me that the novel has
saved her all future trouble in the assortment of her
friends. They have been almost fighting across her din-
ner-table over Tess's character. What she now says to
them is 'Do you support her or not? ? If they say *No
indeed. She deserved hanging. A little harlot F she puts
them in one group. If they say * Poor wronged innocent ! *
and pity her, she puts them in the other group where she
is herself." He was discussing the question thus with an-
other noble dame who sat next him at a large dinner-party,
when they waxed so contentious that they were startled
to find the whole table of two-and- twenty silent, listen-
ing to their theories on this vexed question. And a well-
known beauty and statesman's wife, also present,
snapped out at him : "Hanged ? They ought all to have
been hanged !^

"Took Arthur Balfour's sister in to dinner at the
Jeunes'* Liked her frank, sensible, womanly way of
talking. The reviews have made me shy of presenting
copies of Tess, and I told her plainly that if I gave her one
it might be the means of getting me into hot water with
hen She said: 'Now don't I really look old enough to

AET. 51-52 THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK 7

read any novel with safety by this time !' Some of the
best women don't marry perhaps wisely. "

"April 10. Leslie Ward, in illustration of the calami-
ties of artists, tells me of a lady's portrait, life-size, he has
on his hands, that he was requested by her husband to
paint. When he had just completed the picture she eloped
with a noble earl, whereupon her husband wrote to say he
did not want the painting, and Ward 's labour was wasted,
there being no contract. The end of the story was that the
husband divorced her, and, like Edith in Browning's 'Too
Late', she * married the other', and brought him a son
and heir. At a dinner the very same evening the lady who
was my neighbour at the table told me that her husband
was counsel in the case, which was hurried through, that
the decree might be made absolute and the re-marriage
take place before the baby was born."

"n. In the evening with Sir F. and Lady J. to the
Gaiety Theatre tohear Lottie Collins in her song 'Ta-ra-ra '.
A rather striking tune and performance, to foolish words."

"15. Good Friday. Read review of Tess in The
Quarterly. A smart and amusing article ; but it is easy to
be smart and amusing if a man will forgo veracity and
sincerity. . * . How strange that one may write a book
without knowing what one puts into it or rather, the
reader reads into it. Well, if this sort of thing continues
no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to
deliberately stand up to be shot at."

Moreover, the repute of the book was spreading not
only through England, and America, and the Colonies,
but through the European Continent and Asia ; and dur-
ing this year translations appeared in various languages,
its publication in Russia exciting great interest. On the
other hand, some local libraries in English-speaking coun-
tries "suppressed" the novel with what effect was not
ascertained. Hardy's good-natured friends, Henry James
and R. L. Stevenson (whom he afterwards called the

8 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1892

Polonius and the Osric of novelists), corresponded about
it in this vein: "Oh, yes, dear Louis: *Tess of the
d'Urbervilles* is vile. The pretence of sexuality is only
equalled by the absence of it.[ ?], and the abomination
of the language by the author's reputation for style/"
(Letters of Henry James.)

"16. Dr. Walter Lock, Warden of Keble, Oxford,
called. Tess, he said, *is the Agamemnon without the
remainder of the Oresteian trilogy/ This is inexact, but
suggestive as to how people think.

"Am glad I have got back from London and all those
dinners : London, that hot-plate of humanity, on which
we first sing, then simmer, then boil, then dry away to
dust and ashes !"

"Easter Sunday. Was told a story of a handsome
country-girl. Her lover, though on the point of matrimony
with her, would not perform it because of the temper
shown by her when they went to buy the corner-cupboard
and tea-things, her insistence on a different pattern, and
so on. Their child was born illegitimate. Leaving the
child at home she went to Jersey, for this reason, that a
fellow village girl had gone there, married, and died ; and
the other thought that by going and introducing herself
to the widower as his late wife's playmate and friend from
childhood he would be interested in her and marry her
too. She carried this out, and he did marry her. But her
temper was so bad that he would not live with her ; and
she went on the streets. On her voyage home she died of
disease she had contracted, and was thrown into the sea
some say before she was quite dead. Query: What
became of the baby ?"

He notes that on the 27th of the month, his father,
away in the country, "went upstairs for the last time".
On the 3 1st he received a letter from his sister Mary on
their father *s illness, saying that it being of a mild linger-
ing kind there was no immediate hurry for his return, and

AET. 5 i- 5 a THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK . 9

hence he dined with Lady Malmesbury on his birthday,
June 2nd, in fulfilment of a three weeks' engagement,
before returning to Dorchester* This, however, he did
the next day, arriving at his house just when his brother
had come to fetch him.

He found his father much changed ; and yet he rallied
for some weeks onward.

In the town one day Hardy passed by chance the tent
just erected for Sanger's Circus, when the procession was
about to start. "Saw the Queen climb up on her lofty
gilt-and-crimson throne by a step-ladder. Then the
various nations personified climbed up on theirs. They,
being men, mounted anyhow, 'No swearin* !' being said
to them as a caution. The Queen, seated in her chair on
the terrestrial globe, adjusts her crimson and white robes
over her soiled satin shoes for the start, and looks around
on Hayne's trees, the church-tower, and Egdon Heath in
the distance. As she passes along the South-walk Road
she is obliged to duck her head to avoid the chestnut
boughs tearing off her crown.

"June 26. Considered methods for the Napoleon
drama. Forces; emotions, tendencies. The characters
do not act under the influence of reason."

"July i. We don't always remember as we should
that in getting at the truth, we get only at the true nature
of the impression that an object, etc., produces on us, the
true thing in itself being still, as Kant shows, beyond our
knowledge.

"The art of observation (during travel, etc.) consists
in this : the seeing of great things in little things, the
whole in the part even the infinitesimal part. For
instance, you are abroad : you see an English flag on a
ship-mast from the window of your hotel: you realize the
English navy. Or, at home, in a soldier you see the
British Army, in a bishop at your club, the Church of
England ; and in a steam hooter you hear Industry. -

io TESS, JUDE 3 AND END OF PROSE 189*

He was paying almost daily visits to his father at this
time. On the igth his brother told him the patient was
no worse, so he did not go that day. But on the 2oth
Crocker , one of his brother's men, came to say that their
father had died quietly that afternoon in the house in
which he was born. Thus, in spite of his endeavours,
Hardy had not been present.

Almost the last thing his father had asked for was
water fresh drawn from the well which was brought and
given him; he tasted it and said, "Yes that's our well-
water. Now I know I am at home*'.

Hardy frequently stated in after years that the char-
acter of Horatio in Hamlet was his father's to a nicety,
and in Hardy's copy of that play his father's name and
the date of his death are written opposite the following

lines :

"Thou hast been

As one in suffering all that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks."

He was buried close to his father and mother, and
near the Knights of various dates in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, with whom the Hardys had been
connected.

"August 14. Mother described to-day the three
Hardys as they used to appear passing over the brow of
the hill to Stinsford Church on a Sunday morning, three
or four years before my birth. They were always hurry-
ing, being rather late, their fiddles and violoncello in
green-baize bags under their left arms. They wore top
hats, stick-up shirt-collars, dark blue coats with great
collars and gilt buttons, deep cuffs and black silk 'stocks'
or neckerchiefs. Had curly hair, and carried their heads
to one side as they walked. My grandfather wore drab
cloth breeches and buckled shoes, but his sons wore
trousers and Wellington boots/-

AET. 51-52 THE RECEPTION OF THE, BOOK 11

In August they received at Max Gate a long-promised
visit from Sir Arthur Blomfield, who had taken a house a
few miles off for a month or two. Contrary to Hardy's
expectations Blomfield liked the design of the Max Gate
house. The visit was a very pleasant one,, abounding in
reminiscences of 8 Adelphi Terrace, and included a drive
to "Weatherbury" (Puddletown) Church and an exam-
ination of its architecture.

"August 31. My mother says she looks at the furniture
and feels she is nothing to it. All those belonging to it,
and the place, are gone, and i t is left in her hands, a stranger.
(She has, however, lived there these fifty-three years !)"

''August. I hear of a girl of Maiden Newton who was
shod by contract like a horse, at so much a year."

"September 4. There is a curious Dorset expression
* tankard-legged'. This style of leg seems to have its
biggest end downwards, and I have certainly seen legs of
that sort. My mother says that my Irish ancestress had
them, the accomplished lady who is reputed to have read
the Bible through seven times ; though how my mother
should know what the legs of her husband's great-great-
grandmother were like I cannot tell/'

"Among the many stories of spell- working that I have
been told, the following is one of how it was done by two
girls about 1830. They killed a pigeon, stuck its heart
full of pins, made a tripod of three knitting needles, and
suspended the heart on them over a lamp, murmuring an
incantation while it roasted, and using the name of the
young man in whom one or both were interested. The
said young man felt racking pains about the region of the
heart, and suspecting something went to the constables.
The girls were sent to prison/'

This month they attended a Field-Club meeting at

Swanage, and were introduced to "old Mr. B , c the

King of Swanage'. He had a good profile, but was rougher
in speech than I should have expected after his years of

12 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1892

London being the ordinary type of Dorset man, self-
made by trade,, whenever one of the county does self-make
himself, which is not often. . * . Met Dr. Yeatman, the
Bishop of Southwark [after of Worcester]. He says the
Endicotts [Mrs. J. Chamberlain's ancestors] are a Dorset
family."-

'September 17. Stinsford House burnt. Discovered
it to be on fire when driving home from Dorchester with
E. I left the carriage and ran across the meads. She
drove on, having promised to dine at Canon R. Smith's.
I could soon see that the old mansion was doomed,
though there was not a breath of wind. Coppery flames
were visible in the sun through the trees of the park, and
a few figures in shirt-sleeves on the roof. Furniture on
the lawn : several servants perspiring and crying. Men
battering out windows to get out the things a bruising
of tender memories for me. I worked in carrying books
and other articles to the vicarage. When it grew dark
the flames entered the drawing and dining rooms, light-
ing up the chambers of so much romance. The delicate
tones of the wall-painting seemed pleased at the illumina-
tion at first, till the inside of the rooms became one
roaring oven ; and then the ceiling fell, and then the
roof, sending a fountain of sparks from the old oak into
the sky.

"Met Mary in the churchyard, who had been laying
flowers on Father's grave, on which the firelight now
flickered.

"Walked to Canon Smith's dinner-party just as I was,
it being too late to change, E. had preceded me there,
since I did not arrive until nine. Dinner disorganized
and pushed back between one and two hours, they having
been to the fire. Met Bosworth Smith [Harrow master]
who had taken E. to the fire, though I saw neither of
them. Late home.

"I am sorry for the house. It was where Lady Susan

AET.5I-5* THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK 13

^

Strangways, afterwards Lady Susan O'Brien, lived so
many years with her actor-husband, after the famous
elopement in 1764, so excellently described in Walpole's
Letters, Mary Frampton's Journal, etc.

"As stated, she knew my grandfather well, and he
carefully heeded her tearful instructions to build the
vault for her husband and later herself, 'just large enough
for us two*. Walpole's satire on her romantic choice
that *a footman were preferable' would have missed
fire somewhat if tested by time.

"My father when a boy-chorister in the gallery of the
church used to see her, an old and lonely widow, walking
in the garden in a red cloak."

" End of September. In London. This is the time to
realize London as an old city, all the pulsing excitements
of May being absent.

"Drove home from dining with Mcllvaine at the Cafe
Royal, behind a horse who had no interest in me, was
going a way he had no interest in going, and was whipped
on by a man who had no interest in me, or the horse, or
the way. Amid this string of compulsions reached home."

"October. At Great Fawley, Berks. Entered a
ploughed vale which might be called the Valley of Brown
Melancholy. The silence is remarkable. . . . Though I
am alive with the living I can only see the dead here, and
am scarcely conscious of the happy children at play."

"October 7. Tennyson died yesterday morning."

"October 12. At Tennyson's funeral in Westminster
Abbey. The music was sweet and impressive, but as a
funeral the scene was less penetrating than a plain coun-
try interment would have been. Lunched afterwards at
the National Club with E. Gosse, Austin Dobson,
Theodore Watts, and William Watson."

" 1 8. Hurt my tooth at breakfast- time. I look in the
glass. Am conscious of the humiliating sorriness of my
earthly tabernacle, and of the sad fact that the best of

i 4 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1892

parents could do no better for me. . . . Why should a
man's mind have been thrown into such close, sad,
sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious
object as his own body !"

" 'October 24. The best tragedy highest tragedy in
short is that of the WORTHY encompassed by the IN-
EVITABLE. The tragedies of immoral and worthless
people are not of the best."

"December. At the 'Empire' [Music-Hall]. The
dancing-girls are nearly all skeletons. One can see drawn
lines and puckers in their young flesh. They should be
penned and fattened for a month to round out their
beauty."

"December 17. At an interesting legal dinner at Sir
Francis Jeune's. They were all men of law but myself
mostly judges. Their stories, so old and boring to one
another, were all new to me, and I was delighted. Haw-
kins told me his experiences in the Tichborne case, and
that it was by a mere chance that he was not on the other
side. Lord Coleridge (the cross-examiner in the same
case, with his famous, * Would you be surprised to hear ?')
was also anecdotic. Afterwards, when Lady J. had a
large reception, the electric-lights all went out, just when
the rooms were most crowded, but fortunately there
being a shine from the fire we all stood still till candles
were brought in old rummaged-up candlesticks*"

CHAPTER II

VISITS AND INTERMITTENT WRITING
1893: Act. 52-53

"January 13. The Fiddler of the Reels (short story)
posted to Messrs. Scribner, New York/'

"February 16. Heard a curious account of a grave
that was ordered (by telegraph ?) at West Stafford, and
dug. But no funeral ever came, the person who had
ordered it being unknown ; and the grave had to be filled
up." This entry had probably arisen from Hardy's occu-
pation during some days of this winter in designing his
father's tombstone, of which he made complete drawings
for the stonemason ; and it was possibly his contract with
the stonemason that made him think of that trade for his
next hero, though in designing church stonework as an
architect's pupil he had of course met with many.

"February 22. There cannot be equity in one kind.
Assuming, e.g* y the possession of 1,000,000 sterling or
10,000 acres of land to be the coveted ideal, all cannot
possess 1,000,000 or 10,000 acres. But there is a practi-
cable equity possible : that the happiness which one man
derives from one thing shall be equalled by what another
man derives from another thing. Freedom from worry,
for instance, is a counterpoise to the lack of great posses-
sions, though he who enjoys that freedom may not
think so."

"February 23. A story must be exceptional enough to
justify its telling. We tale-tellers are all Ancient Mari-
ners, and none of us is warranted in stopping Wedding

15

16 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1893

Guests (in other words, the hurrying public) unless he has
something more unusual to relate than the ordinary
experience of every average man and woman.

"The whole secret of fiction and the drama in the
constructional part lies in the adjustment of things un-
usual to things eternal and universal. The writer who
knows exactly how exceptional, and how non-exceptional,
his events should be made, possesses the key to the art/*

"April. I note that a clever thrush, and a stupid
nightingale, sing very much alike.

"Am told that Nat C "s good-for-nothing grand-
son has * turned ranter' i.e. street-preacher and, meet-
ing a girl he used to carry on with, the following dialogue
ensued :

HE : "Do you read your Bible for your spiritual good ? !

SHE : "Ho-ho ! Git along wi' thee P

HE : 'But do you, my dear young woman ?'

SHE: 'Haw-haw! Not this morning!'

HE : *Do you read your Bible, I implore ? '

SHE : (tongue out) c No, nor you neither. Come, you
can't act in that show, Natty ! You haven't the guts to
carry it off!* The discussion was ended by their going off
to Came Plantation."

In London this spring they again met many people,
the popularity of Hardy as an author now making him
welcome anywhere. For the first time they took a whole
house, 70 Hamilton Terrace, and brought up their own
servants, and found themselves much more comfortable
under this arrangement than they had been before.

At such crushes, luncheons, and dinners the Hardys
made or renewed acquaintance also with Mrs. R. Cham-
berlain, Mr* Charles Wyndham, Mr. Goschen, and the
Duke, Duchess, and Princess May of Teck, afterwards
Queen Mary* "Lady Winifred Gardner whispered to me
that meeting the Royal Family always reminded her of
family prayers- The Duke confused the lady who intro-

AET. 52-53 INTERMITTENT WRITING 17

duced me to him by saying it was unnecessary, as he had
known me for years, adding privately to me when she was
gone, * That's good enough for her: of course I meant
I had known you spiritually'/ 1

"13. Whibley dined with me at the Savile, and I
afterwards went with him to the Trocadero Music-Hail.
Saw the great men famous performers at the Halls
drinking at the bar in long coats before going on : on
their faces an expression of not wishing in the least to
emphasize their importance to the world."

" April '19. Thought while dressing, and seeing people
go by to their offices, how strange it is that we should talk
so glibly of 'this cold world which shows no sympathy',
when this is the feeling of so many components of the
same world probably a majority and nearly every
one's neighbour is waiting to give and receive sympathy."

"25. Courage has been idealized; why not Fear?
which is a higher consciousness, and based on a deeper
insight."

"27. A great lack of tact in A. J. B., who was in the
chair at the Royal Literary Fund dinner which I attended
last night. The purpose of the dinner was, of course, to
raise funds for poor authors, largely from the pockets of
the more successful ones who were present with the other
guests. Yet he dwelt with much emphasis on the decline
of the literary art, and on his opinion that there were no
writers of high rank living in these days. We hid our
diminished heads, and buttoned our pockets. What he
said may have been true enough, but alas for saying it
then!"-

"28. At Academy Private View. Find that there is a
very good painting here of Woolbridge Manor-House
under the (erroneous) title of ( Tess of the d'Urbervilles'
ancestral home*. Also one entitled 'In Hardy's Country,
Egdon Heath',

"The worst of taking a furnished house is that the

1 8 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1893

articles in the rooms are saturated with the thoughts and
glances of others/'

"May 10. Spent a scientific evening at the conver-
sazione of the Royal Society,, where I talked on the ex-
hibits to Sir R. Quain, Dr. Clifford Allbutt, Humphry
Ward-, Bos worth Smith, Sir J. Crich ton-Browne, F. and
G. Macmillan, Ray Lankester, and others, without
(I flatter myself) betraying excessive ignorance in respect
of the points in the show.' -

"May 1 8. Left Euston by 9 o'clock morning train
with E. for Llandudno, en route for Dublin. After arrival
at Llandudno drove around Great Orme's Head. Mag-
nificent deep purple-grey mountains, the fine colour
being on account of an approaching storm."

"19. Went on to Holyhead and Kingstown. Met on
board John Morley, the Chief Secretary, and Sir John
Fender. Were awaited at Dublin by conveyance from the
Viceregal Lodge as promised, this invitation being one
renewed from last year, when I was obliged to postpone
my visit on account of my father's death. We were
received by Mrs. Arthur Henniker, the Lord-Lieutenant's
sister. A charming, intuitive woman apparently. Lord
Houghton (the Lord-Lieutenant) came in shortly after.
"Our bedroom windows face the Phoenix Park and the
Wicklow Mountains. The Lodge appears to have been
built some time in the last century. A roomy building
with many corridors."

" 20. To Dublin Castle, Christ Church, etc., conducted
by Mr. Trevelyan, Em having gone with Mrs. Henniker,
Mrs. Greer, and Miss Beresford to a Bazaar. Next day
(Sunday) she went to Christ Church with them, and
Trevelyan and I, after depositing them at the church door,
went on to Bray, where we found the Chief Secretary and
the Lord Chancellor at the grey hotel by the shore,
'making magistrates by the dozen', as Morley said."

Monday. Several went to the races. Mr*

52-53 INTERMITTENT WRITING 19

Lucy (who is also here) and I, however, went Into Dub-
lin, and viewed the public buildings and some comical
drunken women dancing, I suppose because it was
Whitsuntide.

"A larger party at dinner. Mr. Dundas, an A.D.C.,
played banjo and sang : Mrs. Henniker the zithern/'

"23. Morley came to lunch. In the afternoon I went
with EL Lucy to the scene of the Phoenix Park murders."

" 24. Queen's birthday review. Troops and carriages
at door at |- past n. The Aides of whom there are
about a dozen are transformed by superb accoutre-
ments into warriors Mr. St. John Meyrick into a Gor-
don Highlander [he was killed in the South African War],
Mr. Dundas into a dashing hussar. Went in one of the
carriages of the procession with E. and the rest. A roman-
tic scene, pathetically gay, especially as to the horses in
the gallop past. 'Yes : very pretty V Mr. Dundas said, as
one who knew the real thing.

"At lunch Lord Wolseley told me interesting things
about war. On the other side of me was a young lieu-
tenant, grandson of Lady de Ros, who recalled the
Napoleonic wars. By Wolseley's invitation I visited him
at the Military Hospital. Thence drove to Mrs. Lyttel-
ton's to tea at the Chief Secretary's Lodge (which she
rented). She showed me the rooms in which the bodies of
Lord F. Cavendish and Mr. Burke were placed, and told
some gruesome details of the discovery of a roll of bloody
clothes under the sofa after the entry of the succeeding
Secretary. The room had not been cleaned out since
the murders.

"We dined this evening at the Private Secretary's
Lodge with Mrs. Jekyll. Met Mahaffy there, a rattling,
amusing talker, and others. Went back to the Viceregal
Lodge soon enough to join the state diners in the drawing-
room. Talked to several, and the Viceroy. Very funny
altogether, this little Court/ 2

20 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1893

"25. Went over Guinness's Brewery, with Mrs.
Henniker and several of the Viceregal guests, in the
morning. Mr. Guinness conducted us. On the miniature
railway we all got splashed with porter, or possibly dirty
water, spoiling Em's and Mrs. Henniker's clothes. E.
and I left the Lodge after lunch and proceeded by 3
o'clock train to Killarney, Lord Houghton having given
me a copy of his poems. Put up at the Great Southern
Railway Hotel."

"26. Drove in car round Middle Lake, first driving
to Ross Castle. Walked in afternoon about Killarney
town, where the cows stand about the streets like people/'

"27. Started in wagonette for the Gap of Dunloe.
Just below Kate Kearney's house Em mounted a pony
and I proceeded more leisurely on foot by the path. The
scenery of the Black Valley is deeply impressive. Here
are beauties of Nature to delight man, and to degrade
him by attracting all the vagabonds in the country.
Boats met us at the head of the Upper Lake, and we were
rowed through the three to Ross Castle, whence we drove
back to Killarney Town."

On the following Sunday they left and passed through
Dublin, sleeping at the Marine Hotel at Kingstown, and
early the next morning took the boat to Holyhead.
Reached London the same evening.

Early in June Hardy attended a rehearsal at Terry's
Theatre of his one-act play called The Three Wayfarers
a dramatization of his story The Three Strangers y made at
the suggestion of J. M. Barrie. On the 3rd June the play
was produced with one equally short by his friend, and
another or two. The Hardys went with Lady Jeune and
some more friends, and found that the little piece was well
received.

During the week he saw Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and
Rosmersholm, in which Miss Elizabeth Robins played.

AET. 52-53 INTERMITTENT WRITING 21

The former he had already seen, but was again impressed
by it, as well as by the latter. Hardy could not at all
understand the attitude of the English press towards
these tragic productions the culminating evidence of
our blinkered insular taste being afforded by the nick-
name of the "Ibscene drama" which they received.

On the eighth he met for the first time (it is believed)
that brilliant woman, Mrs. Craigie ; and about this date
various other people, including Mr. Hamilton Aide, an
old friend of Sir Arthur BlomfiekTs. In the week he still
followed up Ibsen, going to The Master Builder with Sir
Gerald and Lady Fitzgerald and her sister, Mrs. Henniker,
who said afterwards that she was so excited by the play as
not to be able to sleep all night ; and on Friday lunched
with General Milman at the Tower, inspecting "Little-
ease", and other rooms not generally shown at that time.
In the evening he went with Mrs. Hardy and Miss Milman
to Barrie's play, Walker y London^ going behind the scenes
with Barrie, and making the acquaintance of J. L, Toole,
who said he could not go on even now on a first night
without almost breaking down with nervousness. In a
letter to Mrs. Henniker Hardy describes this experience :

"The evening of yesterday I spent in what I fear you
will call a frivolous manner indeed, during the time, my
mind reverted to our Ibsen experience ; and I could not
help being regretfully struck by the contrast although
I honestly was amused. Barrie had arranged to take
us and Maarten Maartens to see B/s play of Walker^
London^ and lunching yesterday with the Milmans at
the Tower we asked Miss Milman to be of the party.
Mr. Toole heard we had come and invited us behind the
scenes. We accordingly went and sat with him in his
dressing-room, where he entertained us with hock and
champagne, he meanwhile in his paint, wig, and blazer,
as he had come off the stage, amusing us with the drollest
of stories about a visit he and a friend paid to the Tower

22 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1893

some years ago: how he amazed the custodian by
entreating the loan of the crown jewels for an amateur
dramatic performance for a charitable purpose, offering
to deposit 308. as a guarantee that he would return
them,, etc.., etc., etc. We were rather late home as you
may suppose/*

Some ten days later Hardy was at Oxford. It was
during the Encaenia, with the Christ Church and other
college balls, garden parties, and suchlike bright func-
tions, but Hardy did not make himself known, his object
being to view the proceedings entirely as a stranger. It
may be mentioned that the recipients of Honorary De-
grees this year included Lord Rosebery, the Bishop of
Oxford, Dr. Liddell, and Sir Charles Euan Smith, a friend
of his own. He viewed the Commemoration proceedings
from the undergraduates' gallery of the Sheldonian, his
quarters while at Oxford being at the Wilberforce Tem-
perance Hotel.

The remainder of their season in London this year was
of the usual sort. A memorial service to Admiral Tryon,
a view of the marriage procession of the Duke of York
and Princess May from the Club window, performances
by Eleanor a Duse and Ada Rehan in their respective
theatres, with various dinners and luncheons, brought
on the end of their term in Hamilton Terrace, and
they returned to Dorchester. A note he made this
month runs as follows :

"I often think that women, even those who consider
themselves experienced in sexual strategy, do not know
how to manage an honest man."

In the latter part of July Hardy had to go up to town
again for a few days, when he took occasion to attend a
lecture by Stepniak on Tolstoi, to visit City churches, and
to go with Lady Jeune and her daughters to a farewell
performance by Irving. His last call this summer was on

AET. 52-53 INTERMITTENT WRITING 23

Lady Londonderry, who remained his friend through the
ensuing years* "A beautiful woman still", he says of her ;
"and very glad to see me, which beautiful women are not
always. The Duchess of Manchester [Consuelo] called
while I was there, and Lady Jeune. All four of us talked
of the marriage-laws, a conversation which they started,
not I ; also of the difficulties of separation, of terminable
marriages where there are children, and of the nervous
strain of living with a man when you know he can throw
you over at any moment/'

It may be mentioned here that after the Duchess of
Manchester's death a good many years later Hardy de-
scribed her as having been when he first knew her "a
warm-natured woman, laughing-eyed, and bubbling with
impulses, in temperament very much like * Julie-Jane' in
one of my poems'-.

"At Dorchester. July 31 st. Mrs. R. Eliot lunched.
Her story of the twins, * May ' and * June '. May was born
between n and 12 on the 3ist May, and June between
12 and i on June the 1st."

The following month, in reply to an inquiry by the
editors of the Parisian paper UErmitage, he wrote :

"I consider a social system based on individual spon-
taneity to promise better for happiness than a curbed and
uniform one under which all temperaments are bound to
shape themselves to a single pattern of living. To this
end I would have society divided into groups of tempera-
ments ', with a different code of observances for each group."

It is doubtful if this Utopian scheme possessed
Hardy's fancy for any long time.

In the middle of August Hardy and his wife accepted
an invitation to visit the Milnes-Gaskells at Wenlock
Abbey, on their way thither calling at Hereford to see the
Cathedral, Hardy always making a point of not missing
such achievements in architecture, even if familiar. Lady
Catherine and her daughter met them at the station.

24 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1893

"Lady C. is as sweet as ever, and almost as pretty, and
occasionally shows a quizzical wit. The pet name c Catty'
which her dearest friends give her has, I fear, a suspicious
tremor of malice. 5 * They were interested to find their bed-
room in the Norman part of the building, Hardy saying
he felt quite mouldy at sleeping within walls of such
high antiquity.

Their time at the Abbey appears to have been very
pleasant. They idled about in the shade of the ruins, and
Milnes-Gaskell told an amusing story of a congratulatory
dinner by fellow-townsmen to a burgher who had obtained
a divorce from his wife, where the mayor made a speech
beginning, "On this auspicious occasion". During their
stay they went with him to Stokesay Castle and Shrews-
bury. Lady Wenlock came one day; and on Sunday
Hardy and Lady C. walked till they were tired, when they
"sat down on the edge of a lonely sandpit and talked of
suicide, pessimism, whether life was worth living, and
kindred dismal subjects, till we were quite miserable.
After dinner all sat round a lantern in the court under
the stars where Lady C. told stories in the Devonshire
dialect, moths flying about the lantern as in InMemoriam.
She also defined the difference between coquetting and
flirting, considering the latter a grosser form of the first,
and alluded to Zola's phrase, 'a woman whose presence
was like a caress ', saying that some women could not help
it being so, even if they wished it otherwise. I doubted it,
considering it but their excuse for carrying on/'

On their way back the Hardys went to Ludlow Castle,
and deplored the wanton treatment which had led to the
rooflessness of the historic pile where Comus was first
performed and Hudibras partly written. Hardy thought
that even now a millionaire might be able to re-roof it
and make it his residence.

On a flying visit to London at the end of this month,
dining at the Conservative Club with Sir George Douglas,

. 52-53 INTERMITTENT WRITING 25

he had "an interesting scientific conversation" with Sir
James Crichton-Browne. "A woman's brain, according
to him, is as large in proportion to her body as a man's.
The most passionate women are not those selected in
civilized society to breed from, as in a state of nature, but
the colder ; the former going on the streets (I am sceptical
about this). The doctrines of Darwin require readjusting
largely; for instance, the survival of the fittest in the
struggle for life. There is an altruism and coalescence
between cells as well as an antagonism. Certain cells
destroy certain cells; but others assist and combine.
Well, I can't say/'

"September 13. At Max Gate. A striated crimson
sunset ; opposite it I sit in the study writing by the light
of a shaded lamp, which looks primrose against the red."
This was Hardy's old study facing west (now altered) in
which he wrote Tess of the d'Urbermlles y before he re-
moved into his subsequent one looking east, where he
wrote The Dynasts and all his later poetry, and which is
still unchanged.

"September 14. Drove with Em. to the Sheridans ? ,
Frampton. Tea on lawn. Mrs. Mildmay, young Har-
court, Lord Dufferin, etc. On our return all walked with
us as far as the first park-gate. May [afterwards Lady
Stracey] looked remarkably well."

" September 17. At Bockhampton heard a story about
eels that was almost gruesome how they jumped out of
a bucket at night, crawled all over the house and halfway
up the stairs, their tails being heard swishing in the dark,
and were ultimately found in the garden ; and when water
was put to them to wash off the gravel and earth they
became lively and leapt about,"

At the end of the month Hardy and his wife went on a
visit to Sir Francis and Lady Jeune at Arlington Manor,
finding the house when they arrived as cheerful as the
Jeunes* house always was in those days, Hardy saying

26 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1893

that there was never another house like it for cheerful-
ness. Among the other house-guests were Mrs. Craigie
("John Oliver Hobbes"), Lewis Morris, Mr. Stephen (a
director of the North- Western Railway), and Hubert
Howard, son of Lord Carlisle. On Sunday morning
Hardy took a two hours' walk with Mrs. Craigie on the
moor, when she explained to him her reasons for joining
the Roman Catholic Church, a step which had vexed him
somewhat. Apparently he did not consider her reasons
satisfactory, but their friendship remained unbroken.
While staying there they went to Shaw House, an intact
Elizabethan mansion, and to a picnic in Savernake Forest,
"where Lady Jeune cooked luncheon in a great saucepan,
with her sleeves rolled up and an apron on".

" October 7-10. Wrote a song/' (Which of his songs
is not mentioned.)

"November II. Met Lady Cynthia Graham. In
appearance she is something like my idea of Tess, though
I did not know her when the novel was written."

"November 23. Poem. 'The Glass-stainer' (pub-
lished later on)."

"November 28. Poem. 'He views himself as an au-
tomaton' (published).

"December. Found and touched up a short story
called 'An Imaginative Woman'.

" In London with a slight cold in the head. Dined at the
Dss. of Manchester's. Most of the guests had bad colds,
and our hostess herself a hacking cough. A lively dinner
all the same. As some people had not been able to come
I dined with her again a few days later, as did also
George [afterwards Lord] Curzon. Lady Londonderry
told me that her mother's grandmother was Spanish,
whence the name of Theresa. There were also present
the Duke of Devonshire, Arthur Balfour, and Mr. and
Mrs. Lyttelton. When I saw the Duchess again two or
three days later, she asked me how I liked her relation,

52-53 INTERMITTENT WRITING 27

the Duke. I said not much ; he was too heavy for one
thing. 'That's because he's so shy !' she urged. I assure
you he is quite different when it wears off.- I looked as
if I did not believe much in the shyness. However, I'll

assume it was so."

After looking at a picture of Grindelwald and the Wet-
terhorn at somebody's house he writes: "I could argue
thus : * There is no real interest or beauty in this moun-
tain, which appeals only to the childish taste for colour or
size. The little houses at the foot are the real interest of
the scene '." Hardy never did argue so, nor intend to, nor
quite believe the argument; but one understands what
he means.

Finishing his London engagements, which included
the final revision with Mrs. Henniker of a weird story in
which they had collaborated, entitled "The Spectre of
the Real", he spent Christmas at Max Gate as usual, re-
ceiving the carol-singers there on Christmas Eve, where,
"though quite modern, with a harmonium, they made a
charming picture with their lanterns under the trees,
the rays diminishing away in the winter mist". On New
Year's Eve it was calm, and they stood outside the door
listening to the muffled peal from the tower of Fordington
St. George.

CHAPTER III

ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED, MUTILATED, AND
RESTORED

1894-1895: Aet. 53-55

"February 4, 1894. Curious scene encountered this (Sun-
day) evening as I was walking back to Dorchester from
Bockhampton very late nearly 12 o'clock. A girl almost
in white on the top of Stinsford Hill, beating a tam-
bourine and dancing. She looked like one of the * angelic
quire', who had tumbled down out of the sky, and I could
hardly believe my eyes. Not a soul there or near but
her and myself. Was told she belonged to the Salvation
Army, who beat tambourines devotionally." The scene
was afterwards put into verse.

One day this month he spent in Stinsford Churchyard
with his brother, superintending the erection of their
father's tombstone.

At Londonderry House the subject arose of social
blunders. The hostess related some amusing ones of hers ;
but Sir Redvers Buller capped everybody by describing
what he called a " double-barrelled " one of his own. He
inquired of a lady next him at dinner who a certain
gentleman was, "like a hippopotamus", sitting opposite
them. He was the lady's husband ; and Sir Redvers was
so depressed by the disaster that had befallen him that
he could not get it off his mind ; hence at a dinner the
next evening he sought the condolences of an elderly lady,
to whom he related his misfortune; and remembered

28

53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 29

when he had told the story that his listener was the
gentleman's mother.

At a very interesting luncheon at the Bachelors* Club
given by his friend George Curzon he made the acquaint-
ance of Mr. F. C. Selous, the mighty hunter, with the
nature of whose fame he was not, however, quite in sym-
pathy, wondering how such a seemingly humane man
could live for killing ; and also of Lord Roberts and Lord
Lansdowne.

After these cheerful doings he returned to Max Gate
for awhile, but when in London again, to look for a house
for the spring and summer, he occasionally visited a friend
he had earlier known by correspondence, Lord Pembroke,
author of South Sea Bubbles^ a fellow Wessex man, as
he called himself, for whom Hardy acquired a very warm
feeling. He was now ill at a nursing home in London,
and an amusing incident occurred while his visitor was
sitting by his bedside one afternoon, thinking what havoc
of good material it was that such a fine and handsome
man should be prostrated. He whispered to Hardy that
there was a "Tess" in the establishment, who always
came if he rang at that time of the day, and that he would
do so then that Hardy might see her. He accordingly
rang, whereupon Tess's chronicler was much disappointed
at the result ; but endeavoured to discern beauty in the
very indifferent figure who responded, and at last per-
suaded himself that he could do so. When she had gone
the patient apologized, saying that for the first time since
he had lain there a stranger had attended to his summons.

On Hardy's next visit to his friend Pembroke said
with the faintest reproach: "You go to the fashionable
house in front, and you might come round to the back to
see me." The nursing home was at the back of Lady
Londonderry's. They never met again, and when he
heard of Pembroke's unexpected death Hardy remem-
bered the words and grieved.

30 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

"April 7. Wrote to Harper's asking to be allowed to
cancel the agreement to supply a serial story to Harper's
Magazine" This agreement was the cause of a good deal
of difficulty afterwards (the story being Judethe Obscure) ,
as will be seen.

This year they found a house at South Kensington,
and moved into it with servants brought from the coun-
try, to be surprised a little later by the great attention
their house received from butchers' and bakers' young
men, postmen, and other passers-by; when they found
their innocent country servants to have set up flirtations
with all these in a bold style which the London servant
was far too cautious to adopt.

At the end of April he paid a visit to George Meredith
at his house near Box Hill, and had an interesting and
friendly evening there, his son and daughter-in-law being
present. "Meredith , he said, "is a shade artificial in
manner at first, but not unpleasantly so, and he soon for-
gets to maintain it, so that it goes off quite."

At a dinner at the Grand Hotel given by Mr. Astor to
his contributors in May, Hardy had a talk with Lord
Roberts, who spoke most modestly of his achievements. It
was "an artistic and luxuriant banquet, with beds of roses
on the tables, electric lights shining up like glowworms
through their leaves and petals [an arrangement somewhat
of a novelty then], and a band playing behind the palms ".

This month he spared two or three days from London
to go to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where at the house of Mr.
Edward Clodd, his host, he met Grant Allen and
Whymper, the mountaineer, who told of the tragedy on
the Matterhorn in 1865 in which he was the only survivor
of the four Englishmen present a reminiscence which
specially impressed Hardy from the fact that he remem-
bered the particular day, thirty years before, of the
arrival of the news in this country. He had walked from
his lodgings in Westbourne Park Villas to Harrow that

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 31

afternoon, and on entering the place was surprised to
notice people standing at the doors discussing something
with a serious look. It turned out to be the catastrophe,
two of the victims being residents of Harrow. The event
lost nothing by Whymper's relation of it. He afterwards
marked for Hardy on a sketch of the Matterhorn a red
line showing the track of the adventurers to the top and
the spot of the accident a sketch which is still at Max
Gate with his signature,

On a day in the week following he was at the Women
Writers' Club probably its first anniversary meeting
and, knowing what women writers mostly had to put up
with, was surprised to find himself in a group of fashion-
ably dressed youngish ladies, the Princess Christian being
present with other women of rank. "Dear me are
women-writers like this I" he said with changed views.

During the same week they fulfilled likewise day or
night invitations to Lady Carnarvon's, Mrs. Pitt-Rivers's,
and other houses. At Lady Malmesbury's one of her
green linnets escaped from its cage, and he caught it
reluctantly, but feeling that a green linnet at large in Lon-
don would be in a worse predicament than as a prisoner.

At the Countess of 's "a woman very rich and very

pretty" [Marcia, Lady Yarborough], informed him
mournfully in tete-a-tete that people snubbed her, which so
surprised him that he could hardly believe it, and frankly
told her it was her own imagination. She was the lady
of the "Pretty pink frock" poem, though it should be
stated that the deceased was not her husband but an
uncle. And at an evening party at her house later he
found her in a state of nerves, lest a sudden downpour of
rain, which had occurred, should prevent people coming,
and spoil her grand gathering. However, when the worst
of the thunderstorm was over they duly streamed in, and
she touched him j oyfully on the shoulder and said, " You Ve
conjured them !" "My entertainer's sister, Lady P >

32 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

was the most beautiful woman there. On coming away
there were no cabs to be got [on account of a strike, it
seems], and I returned to S.K. on the top of a 'bus. No
sooner was I up there than the rain began again. A girl
who had scrambled up after me asked for the shelter of
my umbrella and I gave it when she startled me by
holding on tight to my arm and bestowing on me many
kisses for the trivial kindness. She told me she had been to
'The Pav', and was tired, and was going home. She had
not been drinking. I descended at the South Kensington
Station and watched the 'bus bearing her away. An affec-
tionate nature wasted on the streets ! It was a strange
contrast to the scene I had just left."

Early in June they were at the first performance of a
play by Mrs. Craigie at Daly's Theatre, and did some
entertaining at their own house, after which Mrs. Hardy
was unwell, and went to Hastings for a change of air,
Hardy going to Dorchester to look at some alterations he
was making in his Max Gate house. At the end of a week
he fetched his wife from Hastings, and after more dinners
and luncheons he went to a melodrama at the Adelphi,
which was said to be based without acknowledgment on
Tess of the d'Urbervilles. He had received many requests
for a dramatic version of the novel, but he found that
nothing could be done with it among London actor-
managers, all of them in their notorious timidity being
afraid of the censure from conventional critics that had
resisted Ibsen ; and he abandoned all idea of producing it,
one prominent actor telling him frankly that he could not
play such a dubious character as Angel Clare (which
would have suited him precisely), "because I have my
name to make, and it would risk my reputation with the
public if I played anything but a heroic character without
spot ". Hardy thought of the limited artistic sense of even
a leading English actor. Yet before and after this time
Hardy received letters or oral messages from almost every

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 33

actress of note in Europe asking for an opportunity of
appearing in the part of "Tess" among them being
Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Ellen Terry, Sarah Bernhardt,
and Eleanora Duse.

During July Hardy met Mrs. Asquith for the first time ;
and at another house he had an interesting conversation
with Dr. W. H. Russell on the battles in the Franco-
Prussian war, where Russell had been correspondent for
The Times, and was blamed by some readers for putting
too much realism into his accounts. Russell told Hardy a
distressing story of a horse with no under jaw, laying its
head upon his thigh in a dumb appeal for sympathy, two
or three days after the battle of Gravelotte, when he was
riding over the field ; and other such sickening experiences.

Whether because he was assumed to have written a
notorious novel or not Hardy could not say, but he found
himself continually invited hither and thither to see
famous beauties of the time some of whom disappointed
him ; but some he owned to be very beautiful, such as Lady
Powis, Lady Yarborough, Lady de Grey "handsome,
tall, glance-giving, arch, friendly" the Duchess of Mont-
rose, Mrs. John Hanbury, Lady Cynthia Graham, Amelie
Rives, and many others. A crush at Lady Spencer's at the
Admiralty was one of the last of the parties they attended
this season. But he mostly was compelled to slip away as
soon as he could from these gatherings, finding that they
exhausted him both of strength and ideas, few of the
latter being given him in return for his own, because the
fashionable throng either would not part from those it
possessed, or did not possess any.

On the day of their giving up their house at South
Kensington a curious mishap befell him. He had dis-
patched the servants and luggage in the morning ; Mrs.
Hardy also had driven off to the station, leaving him, as
they had arranged, to look over the house, see all was
right, and await the caretaker, when he and his port-

34 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

manteau would follow the rest to Dorchester. He was
coming down the stairs of the silent house dragging the
portmanteau behind him when his back gave way, and
there he had to sit till the woman arrived to help him. In
the course of the afternoon he was better and managed to
get off, the acute pain turning out to be rheumatism
aggravated by lifting the portmanteau.

"August 1-7. Dorchester : Seedy : back got better by
degrees."

"October 16. To London to meet Henry Harper on
business."

" October 20. Dined at the Guards' Mess, St. James's,
with Major Henniker. After dinner went round with him
to the sentries with a lantern/-'

"October 23. Dining at the Savile last Sunday with
Ray Lankester we talked of hypnotism, will, etc. He did
not believe in silent influence, such as making a person
turn round by force of will without communication. But
of willing, for example, certain types of women by speech
to do as you desire such as 'You shall r , or you are to>
marry me', he seemed to have not much doubt. If true,
it seems to open up unpleasant possibilities."

"November. Painful story. Old P , who narrowly

escaped hanging for arson about 1830, returned after his
imprisonment, died at West Stafford, his native village,
and was buried there. His widow long after died in Ford-
ington, having saved 5 to be buried with her husband.
The rector of the village made no objection, and the grave
was dug. Meanwhile the daughter had come home, and
said the money was not enough to pay for carrying the
body of her mother out there in the country ; so the grave
was filled in, and the woman buried where she died."

"November n. Old song heard :

*And then she arose,
And put on her best clothes,
And went off to the north with the Blues.*

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 35

"Another:

* Come ashore, Jolly Tar, with your trousers on/

"Another (sung at J. D.'s wedding) :

'Somebody here has been . . .
Or else some charming shepherdess
That wears the gown of green.' "

In December he ran up to London alone on publishing
business, and stayed at a temporary room off Piccadilly,
to be near his club. It was then that there seems to have
occurred, according to what he said later, some incident
of the kind possibly adumbrated in the verses called "At
Mayfair Lodgings ", in Moments of Vision. He watched
during a sleepless night a lighted window close by, won-
dering who might be lying there ill. Afterwards he dis-
covered that a woman had lain there dying, and that she
was one whom he had cared for in his youth, when she
was a girl in a neighbouring village.

In March of the next year (1895) Hardy was going
about the neighbourhood of Dorchester and other places
in Wessex with Mr. Macbeth Raeburn, the well-known
etcher, who had been commissioned by the publishers to
make sketches on the spot for frontispieces to the Wessex
Novels. To those scenes which Hardy could not visit
himself he sent the artist alone, one of which places, Char-
borough Park, the scene of Two on a Tower ', was extremely
difficult of access, the owner jealously guarding ingress
upon her estate, and particularly to her park and house.
Raeburn came back in the evening full of his adventures.
Reaching the outer park-gate he found it locked, but the
lodge-keeper opened it on his saying he had important
business at the house. He then reached the second park-
gate, which was unfastened to him on the same representa-
tion of urgency, but more dubiously. He then got to the
front door of the mansion, rang, and asked permission to

36 TESS, JUDE 5 AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

sketch the house. "Good God !" said the butler, "you don't
know what you are asking. You had better be off before
the mis'ess sees you, or the bailiff comes across you !" He
started away discomfited, but thought he would make an
attempt at a sketch behind the shadow of a tree. Whilst
doing this he heard a voice shouting, and beheld a man
runninguptohim theredoubtablebailiff who promptly
ordered him out of the park. Raeburn as he moved off
thought he detected something familiar in the accent of
the bailiff, and turning said, "Surely you come from my
country?" "An' faith, man, it may be so!" the bailiff
suddenly replied, whereon they compared notes, and
found they had grown up in the same Scottish village. Then
matters changed. * ' Draw where you like and what you like,
only don't let her see you from the winders at a'. She's a
queer auld body, not bad at bottom, though it's rather
far down. Draw as ye will, an' if I see her coming I'll
hauld up my hand." Mr. Raeburn finished his sketch in
peace and comfort, and it stands to this day at the begin-
ning of the novel as evidence of the same.

During the spring they paid a visit of a few days to the
Jeunes at Arlington Manor, where they also found Sir EL
Drummond Wolff, home from Madrid, Lady Dorothy
Nevill, Sir Henry Thompson, and other friends ; and in
May entered a flat at Ashley Gardens, Westminster, for
the season. While here a portrait of Hardy was painted
by Miss Winifred Thomson. A somewhat new feature in
their doings this summer was going to teas on the terrace
of the House of Commons in those days a newly fashion-
able form of entertainment. Hardy was not a bit of a
politician, but he attended several of these, and of course
met many Members there.

On June 29 Hardy attended the laying of the foundation
stone of the Westminster Cathedral, possibly because the
site was close to the flat he occupied, for he had no leanings
to Roman Catholicism. However, there he was, and deeply

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 37

impressed by the scene. In July he visited St. Saviour's,
Southwark, by arrangement with Sir Arthur Blomfield, to
see how he was getting on with the restoration. Dinners
and theatres carried them through the month, in which
he also paid a visit to Burford Bridge, to dine at the hotel
with the Omar Khayyam Club and meet George Meredith,
where the latter made a speech, and Hardy likewise, said
to be the first and last ever made by either of them ; at
any rate it was the first, and last but one or two, by Hardy.

Hardy's entries of his doings were always of a fitful
and irregular kind, and now there occurs a hiatus which
cannot be filled. But it is clear that at the end of the sum-
mer at Max Gate he was "restoring the MS. of Jude the
Obscure to its original state" on which process he sets
down an undated remark, probably about the end of
August, when he sent off the restored copy to the pub-
lishers :

"On account of the labour of altering Jude the Obscure
to suit the magazine, and then having to alter it back, I
have lost energy for revising and improving the original
as I meant to do."

In September they paid a week's visit to General and
Mrs. Pitt-Rivers at Rushmore, and much enjoyed the
time. It was on the occasion of the annual sports at the
Larmer Tree, and a full moon and clear sky favouring, the
dancing on the green was a great success. The local paper
gives more than a readable description of the festivity for
this particular year :

"After nightfall the scene was one of extraordinary
picturesqueness and poetry, its great features being the
illumination of the grounds by thousands of Vauxhall
lamps, and the dancing of hundreds of couples under these
lights and the mellow radiance of the full moon. For the
dancing a space was especially enclosed, the figures chosen
being mostly the polka-mazurka and schottische, though
some country-dances were started by the house-party,

3 8 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

and led off by the beautiful Mrs. Grove, the daughter of
General Pitt-Rivers, and her charming sister-in-law, Mrs.
Pitt. Probably at no other spot in England could such a
spectacle have been witnessed at any time. One could
hardly believe that one was not in a suburb of Paris, in-
stead of a corner in old-fashioned Wiltshire, nearly ten
miles from a railway-station in any direction/'

It may be worth mentioning that, passionately fond
of dancing as Hardy had been from earliest childhood,
this was the last occasion on which he ever trod a measure,
according to his own recollection ; at any rate on the green-
sward, which is by no means so springy to the foot as it
looks, and left him stiff in the knees for some succeed-
ing days. It was he who started the country dances,
his partner being the above-mentioned Mrs. (afterwards
Lady) Grove.

A garden-party of their own at Max Gate finished the
summer doings of the Hardys this year ; and a very differ-
ent atmosphere from that of dancing on the green soon
succeeded for him, of the coming of which, by a strange
divination, he must have had a suspicion, else why should
he have made the following note beforehand ?

* Never retract. Never explain. Get it done and
let them howl/ Words said to Jowett by a very practical
friend/'

On the ist November Jude the Obscure was published.

A week after, on the 8th, he sets down :

"England seventy years ago. I have heard of a girl,
now a very old woman, who in her youth was seen follow-
ing a goose about the common all the afternoon to get a
quill from the bird, with which the parish-clerk could
write for her a letter to her lover. Such a first-hand method
of getting a quill-pen for important letters was not in-
frequent at that date/- It may be added that Hardy him-
self had written such love-letters, and read the answers to

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 39

them : but this was after the use of the quill had been
largely abandoned for that of the steel pen, though old
people still stuck to quills, and Hardy himself had to
practice his earliest lessons in writing with a quill.

The onslaught upon Jude started by the vituperative
section of the press unequalled in violence since the pub-
lication of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads thirty years
before was taken up by the anonymous writers of libel-
lous letters and postcards, and other such gentry. It
spread to America and Australia, whence among other
appreciations he received a letter containing a packet of
ashes, which the virtuous writer stated to be those of his
iniquitous novel.

fThus, though Hardy with his quick sense of humour
could not help seeing a ludicrous side to it all, and was
well enough aware that the evil complained of was what
these "nice minds with nasty ideas " had read into his
book, and not what he had put therejhe underwent the
strange experience of beholding a sinister lay figure of
himself constructed by them, which had no sort of re-
semblance to him as he was, and which he, and those
who knew him well, would not have recognized as being
meant for himself if it had not been called by his name.
Macaulay's remark in his essay on Byron was well
illustrated by Thomas Hardy's experience at this time :
"We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British
public in one of its periodical fits of morality."

In contrast to all this it is worth while to quote what
Swinburne wrote to Hardy after reading Jude the Obscure.

" The tragedy if I may venture an opinion is equally
beautiful and terrible in its pathos. The beauty, the terror,
and the truth, are all yours and yours alone. But (if I may
say so) how cruel you are ! Only the great and awful father
of * Pierrette* and *L 'Enfant Maudit' was ever so merci-
less to his children. I think it would hardly be seemly to

40 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

enlarge on all that I admire in your work or on half of
it The man who can do such work can hardly care about
criticism or praise, but I will risk saying how thankful we
should be (I know that I may speak for other admirers
as cordial as myself) for another admission into an English
paradise 'under the greenwood tree'. But if you prefer to
be or to remain TTOL^TCOV rpayu<a>TaTo<$ 1 no doubt you
may ; for Balzac is dead, and there has been no such tragedy
in fiction on anything like the same lines since he died.
"Yours most sincerely,

"A. C. SWINBURNE."

Three letters upon this same subject, written by Hardy
himself to a close friend, may appropriately be given here.

LETTER I.

"MAX GATE,

" DORCHESTER,

"November lo/A, 1895.

". . . Your review (ofjude the Obscure) is the most
discriminating that has yet appeared. It required an artist
to see that the plot is almost geometrically constructed I
ought not to say constructed, for, beyond a certain point,
the characters necessitated it, and I simply let it come.
As for the story itself, it is really sent out to those into
whose souls the iron has entered, and has entered deeply
at some time of their lives. But one cannot choose one's
readers.

"It is curious that some of the papers should look upon
the novel as a manifesto on 'the marriage question ' (al-
though, of course, it involves it), seeing that it is concerned
first with the labours of a poor student to get a University
degree, and secondly with the tragic issues of two bad
marriages, owing in the main to a doom or curse of hered-
itary temperament peculiar to the family of the parties.
1 The most tragic of authors.

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 41

The only remarks which can be said to bear on the general
marriage question occur in dialogue, and comprise no more
than half a dozen pages in a book of five hundred. And of
these remarks I state (p. 362) that my own views are not
expressed therein. I suppose the attitude of these critics
is to be accounted for by the accident that, during the
serial publication of my story, a sheaf of 'purpose* novels
on the matter appeared.

"You have hardly an idea how poor and feeble the
book seems to me, as executed, beside the idea of it that
I had formed in prospect.

"I have received some interesting letters about it
already yours not the least so. Swinburne writes, too
enthusiastically for me to quote with modesty.

"Believe me, with sincere thanks for your review,

"Ever yours,

"THOMAS HARDY."

"P.S. One thing I did not answer. The * grimy -
features of the story go to show the contrast between the
ideal life a man wished to lead, and the squalid real life
he was fated to lead. The throwing of the pizzle, at the
supreme moment of his young dream, is to sharply initiate
this contrast. But I must have lamentably failed, as I feel
I have, if this requires explanation and is not self-evident.
The idea was meant to run all through the novel. It is,
in fact, to be discovered in everybody's life, though it lies
less on the surface perhaps than it does in my poor
puppet's. T. H."

LETTER II.

"MAX GATE,

" DORCHESTER,

"November loth, 1895.

"I am keen about the new magazine. How interesting
that you should be writing this review for it ! I wish the
book were more worthy of such notice and place.

42 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

"You are quite right; there is nothing perverted or
depraved in Sue's nature. The abnormalism consists in
disproportion, not in inversion, her sexual instinct being
healthy as far as it goes, but unusually weak and fastidi-
ous. Her sensibilities remain painfully alert notwith-
standing, as they do in nature with such women. One
point illustrating this I could not dwell upon : that, though
she has children, her intimacies with Jude have never
been more than occasional, even when they were living
together (I mention that they occupy separate rooms,
except towards the end), and one of her reasons for fearing
the marriage ceremony is that she fears it would be break-
ing faith with Jude to withhold herself at pleasure, or
altogether, after it ; though while uncontracted she feels
at liberty to yield herself as seldom as she chooses. This
has tended to keep his passion as hot at the end as at the
beginning, and helps to break his heart. He has never
really possessed her as freely as he desired.

"Sue is a type of woman which has always had an
attraction for me, but the difficulty of drawing the type
has kept me from attempting it till now.

"Of course the book is all contrasts or was meant to
be in its original conception. Alas, what a miserable ac-
complishment it is, when I compare it with what I meant
to make it ! e.g. Sue and her heathen gods set against
Jude's reading the Greek testament ; Christminster aca-
demical, Christminster in the slums ; Jude the saint, Jude
the sinner ; Sue the Pagan, Sue the saint ; marriage, no
marriage ; &c., &c.

"As to the * coarse' scenes with Arabella, the battle
in the schoolroom, etc., the newspaper critics might, I
thought, have sneered at them for their Fieldingism
rather than for their Zolaism. But your everyday critic
knows nothing of Fielding. I am read in Zola very little,
but have felt akin locally to Fielding, so many of his
scenes having been laid down this way, and his home near.

53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 43

"Did I tell you I feared I should seem too High-
Churchy at the end of the book where Sue recants ? You
can imagine my surprise at some of the reviews.
"What a self-occupied letter !

"Ever sincerely,

"T. H.a
LETTER III.

"MAX GATE,

"DORCHESTER,

"January 4, 1896.

"For the last three days I have been tantalized by a
difficulty in getting Cosmopolis, and had only just read
your review when I received your note. My sincere thanks
for the generous view you take of the book, which to me
is a mass of imperfections. We have both been amused
or rather delighted by the sub-humour (is there such a
word ?) of your writing. I think it a rare quality in living
essayists, and that you ought to make more of it I mean
write more in that vein than you do.

"But this is apart from the review itself, of which I
will talk to you when we meet. The rectangular lines of
the story were not premeditated, but came by chance :
except, of course, that the involutions of four lives must
necessarily be a sort of quadrille. The only point in the
novel on which I feel sure is that it makes for morality ;
and that delicacy or indelicacy in a writer is according to
his obj ect. If I say to a lady f I met a naked woman ', it is
indelicate. But if I go on to say "I found she was mad
with sorrow', it ceases to be indelicate. And in writing
Jude my mind was fixed on the ending,

"Sincerely yours,

"T. H."

In London in December they went to see Forbes-
Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Romeo and
Juliet, supping with them afterwards at Willis's Rooms,

44 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1894-95

a building Hardy had known many years earlier, when it
was still a ballroom unaltered in appearance from that of
its famous days as "Almack V indeed, he had himself
danced on the old floor shortly after his first arrival in
London in 1862, as has been mentioned.

When they got back to Dorchester during December
Hardy had plenty of time to read the reviews ofjude that
continued to pour out. Some paragraphists knowingly
assured the public that the book was an honest auto-
biography, and Hardy did not take the trouble to deny it
till more than twenty years later, when he wrote to an
inquirer with whom the superstition still lingered that
no book he had ever written contained less of his own life,
which of course had been known to his friends from the
beginning. Some of the incidents were real in so far as
that he had heard of them, or come in contact with them
when they were occurring to people he knew ; but no more.
It is interesting to mention that on his way to school he
did once meet with a youth like Jude who drove the bread-
cart of a widow, a baker, like Mrs. Fawley, and carried on
his studies at the same time, to the serious risk of other
drivers in the lanes ; which youth asked him to lend him
his Latin grammar. But Hardy lost sight of this featful
student, and never knew if he profited by his plan.

Hardy makes a remark on one or two of the reviews :

"Tragedy may be created by an opposing environ-
ment either of things inherent in the universe, or of human
institutions. If the former be the means exhibited and
deplored, the writer is regarded as impious ; if the latter,
as subversive and dangerous ; when all the while he may
never have questioned the necessity or urged the non-
necessity of either. . . /-

During this year 1 895, and before and after, Tess of the
d'Urbervilks went through Europe in translations, Ger-
man, French, Russian, Dutch, Italian, and other tongues,
Hardy as a rule stipulating that the translation should be

AET. 53-55 ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED 45

complete and unabridged, on a guarantee of which he
would make no charge. Some of the renderings, however,
were much hacked about in spite of him. The Russian
translation appears to have been read and approved by
Tolstoi during its twelve-months' career in a Moscow
monthly periodical.

In December he replied to Mr. W. T. Stead, editor of
The Review of Reviews :

"I am unable to answer your inquiry as to * Hymns
that have helped me'.

" But the undermentioned have always been familiar
and favourite hymns of mine as poetry :

" i. 'Thou turnest man, O Lord, to dust*. Ps. xc. vv.
3, 4, 5, 6, (Tate and Brady.)

"2. ' Awake, my soul, and with the sun.* (Morning
Hymn, Ken.).

"3. ' Lead, kindly Light/ (Newman.)"

So ended the year 1895.

CHAPTER IV

MORE ON "JUDE", AND ISSUE OF "THE WELL-BELOVED"
1896-1897: Aet. 55-57

HARDY found that the newspaper comments on Jude the
Obscure were producing phenomena among his country
friends which were extensive and peculiar, they having a
pathetic reverence for press opinions. However, on re-
turning to London in the spring he discovered somewhat
to his surprise that people there seemed not to be at all
concerned at his having been excommunicated by the
press, or by at least a noisy section of it, and received him
just the same as ever ; so that he and his wife passed this
season much as usual, going to Lady Malmesbury's wed-
ding and also a little later to the wedding of Sir George
Lewis's son at the Jewish Synagogue ; renewing acquaint-
ance with the beautiful Duchess of Montrose and Lady
Londonderry, also attending a most amusing masked ball
at his friends Mr. and Mrs. Montagu Crackanthorpe's,
where he and Henry James were the only two not in
dominos, and were recklessly flirted with by the women
in consequence.

This year they took again the house in South Kensing-
ton they had occupied two years earlier, and gave some
little parties there. But it being a cold damp spring Hardy
caught a chill by some means, and was laid up with a
rheumatic attack for several days, in May suffering from
a relapse. He was advised to go to the seaside for a change
of air, and leaving the London house in the charge of

4 6

AET. 55-57 MORE ON JUDE 47

the servants went with Mrs. Hardy to lodgings at
Brighton*

While there he received a request from the members
of the Glasgow University Liberal Club to stand as their
candidate in the election of a Lord Rector for the Univer-
sity : the objection to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who had
been nominated, being that he was not a man of letters.
Hardy's reply to the Honorary Secretary was written
from Brighton on May 16, 1896.

"DEAR SIR,

"Your letter has just reached me here, where I am
staying for a few days for change of air after an illness.

" In reply let me assure you that I am deeply sensible
of the honour of having been asked by the members of
the Glasgow University Liberal Club to stand as their
candidate for the Lord Rectorship.

"In other circumstances I might have rejoiced at the
opportunity. But personal reasons which it would be
tedious to detail prevent my entertaining the idea of
coming forward for the office, and I can only therefore
request you to convey to the Club my regrets that such
should be the case; and my sincere thanks for their
generous opinion of my worthiness.

"I am, dear Sir,

"Yours faithfully,

"THOMAS HARDY.'-*

There they stayed about a week and, finding little
improvement effected, returned to South Kensington. By
degrees he recovered, and they resumed going out as usual,
and doing as much themselves to entertain people as they
could accomplish in a house not their own. This mostly
took a form then in vogue, one very convenient for literary
persons, of having afternoon parties, to the invitations to
which their friends of every rank as readily responded as

4 8 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

they had done in former years, notwithstanding the fact
that at the very height of the season the Bishop of Wake-
field announced in a letter to the papers that he had
thrown Hardy's novel into the fire. Knowing the diffi-
culty of burning a thick book even in a good fire, and the
infrequency of fires of any sort in summer, Hardy was
mildly sceptical of the literal truth of the bishop's story ;
but remembering that Shelley, Milton, and many others of
the illustrious, reaching all the way back to the days of
Protagoras, had undergone the same sort of indignity at
the hands of bigotry and intolerance he thought it a pity in
the interests of his own reputation to disturb the episcopal
narrative of adventures with Jude. However, it appeared
that, further, to quote the testimony in the Bishop's
Life the scandalised prelate was not ashamed to deal a
blow below the belt, but " took an envelope out of his paper-
stand and addressed it to W. F. D. Smith, Esq., M.P.
The result was the quiet withdrawal of the book from the
library, and an assurance that any other books by the
same author would be carefully examined before they were
allowed to be circulated/- Of this precious conspiracy
Hardy knew nothing, or it might have moved a mind
which the burning could not stir to say a word on literary
garrotting* In his ignorance of it he remained silent, being
fully aware of one thing, that the ethical teaching of the
novel, even if somewhat crudely put, was as high as that
of any of the bishop's sermons (indeed, Hardy was after-
wards reproached for its being "too much of a sermon").
And thus feeling quite calm on the ultimate verdict of
Time he merely reflected on the shallowness of the epis-
copal view of the case and of morals generally, which
brought to his memory a witty remark he had once read
in a Times leading article, to the effect that the qualities
which enabled a man to become a bishop were often the
very reverse of those which made a good bishop when he
became one.

AET.55-5 MORE ON JUDE 4S

The only sad feature in the matter to Hardy was that
if the bishop could have known him as he was, he would
have found a man whose personal conduct, views oi
morality, and of the vital facts of religion, hardly differed
from his own. 1

Possibly soured by all this he wrote a little while after
his birthday :

"Every man's birthday is a first of April for him ; and
he who lives to be fifty and won't own it is a rogue or a
fool, hypocrite or simpleton."

At a party at Sir Charles Tennant's, to which Hardy
and his wife were invited to meet the Eighty Club, Lord
Rosebery took occasion in a conversation to inquire "why
Hardy had called Oxford ' ChristminsterY' Hardy as-
sured him that he had not done anything of the sort,
"Christminster" being a city of learning that was cer-
tainly suggested by Oxford, but in its entirety existed
nowhere else in the world but between the covers of the
novel under discussion. The answer was not so flippant
as it seemed, for Hardy *s idea had been, as he often ex-
plained, to use the difficulty of a poor man's acquiring
learning at that date merely as the "tragic mischief"
(among others) of a dramatic story, for which purpose an
old-fashioned University at the very door of the poor man
was the most striking method ; and though the architec-
ture and scenery of Oxford were the best in England

1 That the opinions thus expressed by Bishop How in 1895 are not now
shared by all the clergy may be gathered from the following extract from
an article in Theology, August, 1928 :

" If I were asked to advise a priest preparing to become a village rector
I would suggest first that he should make a good retreat . . . and then
that he should make a careful study of Thomas Hardy's novels. . . . From
Thomas Hardy he would learn the essential dignity of country people and
what deep and often passionate interest belongs to every individual life.
You cannot treat them in the mass: each single soul is to be the object of
your special and peculiar prayer."

The author of this article is an eminent clergyman of the Church of
England.

50 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

adapted for this, he did not slavishly copy them ; Indeed
in some details he departed considerably from whatever
of the city he took as a general model. It is hardly neces-
sary to add that he had no feeling in the matter, and used
Jude's difficulties of study as he would have used war, fire,
or shipwreck for bringing about a catastrophe.

fit has been remarked above that Hardy with his quick
sense of humour could not help seeing a ludicrous side to
his troubles over yude^ and an instance to that effect now
occurred. The New York World had been among those
papers that fell foul of the book in the strongest terms, the
critic being a maiden lady who expressed herself thus :

f^What has happened to Thomas Hardy ? . . * I am
shocked, appalled by this story ! ... It is almost the
worst book I ever read ... I thought that Tess of the
d'Urbermlles was bad enough, but that is milk for babes
compared to this. ... It is the handling of it that is the
horror of it. ... I do not believe that there is a news-
paper in England or America that would print this story
of Thomas Hardy's as it stands in the book. Aside from
its immorality there is coarseness which is beyond belief.
. . . When I finished the story I opened the windows and
let in the fresh air, and I turned to my bookshelves and I
said : 'Thank God for Kipling and Stevenson, Barrie and
Mrs. Humphry Ward. Here are four great writers who
have never trailed their talents in the dirtV-

It was therefore with some amazement that in the
summer, after reading the above and other exclamations
grossly maligning the book and the character of its author,
to show that she would not touch him with a pair of tongs,
he received a letter from the writer herself. She was in
London, and requested him to let her interview him " to
get your side of the argument-'. He answered:

AET. 55-57 MORE ON JUDE 51

"SAVILE CLUB,

"Mv DEAR MADAM : ">6> l6 > ^96.

" I have to inform you in answer

to your letter that ever since the publication of Jude the
Obscure I have declined to be interviewed on the subject
of that book ; and you must make allowance for human
nature when I tell you that I do not feel disposed to de-
part from this rule in favour of the author of the review of
the novel in the New York World.

"I am aware that the outcry against it in America was
only an echo of its misrepresentation here by one or two
scurrilous papers which got the start of the more sober
press, and that dumb public opinion was never with these
writers. But the fact remains that such a meeting would
be painful to me and, I think, a disappointment to you.

"Moreover, my respect for my own writings and repu-
tation is so very slight that I care little about what hap-
pens to either, so that the rectification of judgments, etc,,
and the way in which my books are interpreted, do not
much interest me. Those readers who, like yourself, could
not see that Jude (though a book quite without a * pur-
pose* as it is called) makes for morality more than any
other book I have written, are not likely to be made to do
so by a newspaper article, even from your attractive pen.

"At the same time I cannot but be touched by your
kindly wish to set right any misapprehension you may have
caused about the story. Such a wish will always be cherished
in my recollection, and it removes from my vision of you
some obviously unjust characteristics I had given it in my
mind. This is, at any rate on my part, a pleasant gain from
your letter, whilst I am ' never the worse for a touch or two
on my speckled hide* as the consequence of your review.

"Believe me, dear Madam,
"Yours sincerely,

"THOMAS HARDY.
"To Miss JEANNETTE GILDER/'

52 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

It may be interesting to give Miss Gilder's reply to
this:

"HOTEL CECIL,

"July 17, '9&
"DEAR MR. HARDY,

" I knew that you were a great

man, but I did not appreciate your goodness until I
received your letter this morning.

"Sincerely yours,
"JEANNETTE L. GILDER."

Hardy must indeed have shown some magnanimity in
condescending to answer the writer of a review containing
such contumelious misrepresentations as hers had con-
tained. But, as he said, she was a woman, after all one
of the sex that makes up for lack of justice by excess of
generosity and she had screamed so grotesquely loud in
her article that Hardy's sense of the comicality of it had
saved his feelings from being much hurt by the out-
rageous slurs.

Here, he thought, the matter had ended. But make the
doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement.
The amusing sequel to the episode was that the unsus-
pecting Hardy was invited to an evening party a few days
later by an American lady resident in London, and though
he knew her but slightly he went, having nothing better to
do. While he was talking to his hostess on the sofa a strange
lady drew up her chair rather near them, and listened to the
conversation, but did not join in it. It was not till after-
wards that he discovered that this silent person had been
his reviewer, who was an acquaintance of his entertainer,
and that the whole thing had been carefully schemed.

Various social events took them into and through
July ; Hardy's chief pleasure, however, being none of
these but a pretty regular attendance with his wife in this,
as in other summers, at the Imperial Institute, not far

AET. 55-57 MORE ON JUDE 53

from their house, where they would sit and listen to the
famous bands of Europe that were engaged year after year
by the management, but were not, to Hardy's regret, suffi-
ciently appreciated by the London public. Here one eve-
ning they met, with other of their friends, the beautiful
Mrs., afterwards Lady, Grove ; and the " Blue Danube"
Waltz being started, Hardy and the latter lady danced
two or three turns to it among the promenaders, who eyed
them with a mild surmise as to whether they had been
drinking or not. In such wise the London season drew to
a close and was wound up, as far as they were concerned,
with the wedding of one of Lady Jeune's daughters, Miss
Dorothy Stanley, at St. George's, Hanover Square* to
Mr. Henry Allhusen.

When he reached Dorchester he paid a visit to his
mother, on whom he remarks that she was well, but that
"her face looked smaller".

On the 1 2th August they left Dorchester for Malvern,
where they put up at the Foley Arms, climbed the Beacon,
Hardy on foot, Mrs. Hardy on a mule ; drove round the
hills, visited the Priory Church, and thence went on to
Worcester to see the Cathedral and Porcelain Works;
after which they proceeded to Warwick and Kenilworth,
stopping to correct proofs at the former place, and to go
over the castle and church. A strange reminder of the
transitoriness of life was given to Hardy in the church,
where, looking through a slit by chance he saw the coffin
of the then recent Lord Warwick, who, a most kindly man,
some while before, on meeting him in London, had in-
vited him to Warwick Castle, an invitation which he had
been unable to accept at the time, though he had prom-
ised to do so later. "Here I am at last", he said to the
coffin as he looked ; "and here are you to receive me !"
It made an impression on Hardy which he never forgot.
They took lodgings for a week at Stratford-on-Avon
and visited the usual spots associated with Shakespeare's

54 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

name; going on to Coventry and to Reading, a town
which had come into the life of Hardy's paternal grand-
mother, who had lived here awhile; after which they went
to Dover, where Hardy read King Lear, which was begun
at Stratford. He makes the following observation on the
play :

"September 6. Finished reading King Lear. The
grand scale of the tragedy, scenically, strikes one, and also
the large scheme of the plot. The play rises from and after
the beginning of the third act, and Lear's dignity with it.
Shakespeare did not quite reach his intention in the King's
character, and the splitting of the tragic interest between
him and Gloucester does not, to my mind, enhance its
intensity, although commentators assert that it does."

" September 8. Why true conclusions are not reached,
notwithstanding everlasting palaver : Men endeavour to
hold to a mathematical consistency in things, instead of
recognizing that certain things may both be good and
mutually antagonistic: e.g., patriotism and universal
humanity ; unbelief and happiness.

"There are certain questions which are made un-
important by their very magnitude. For example, the
question whether we are moving in Space this way or
that ; the existence of a God, etc/'

Having remained at Dover about a fortnight they
crossed to Ostend in the middle of September, and went
on to Bruges. He always thought the railway station of
this town the only satisfactory one in architectural design
that he knew. It was the custom at this date to admire
the brick buildings of Flanders, and Hardy himself had
written a prize essay as a young man on Brick and Terra-
Cotta architecture; but he held then, as always, that
nothing can really compensate in architecture for the lack
of stone, and would say on this point with perhaps some
intentional exaggeration that the ashlar back-yards of
Bath had more dignity than any brick front in Europe.

AET. 55-57 MORE ON JUDE 55

From Bruges they went on to Brussels, Namur, and
Dinant, through scenes to become synonymous with
desolation in the war of after years.

"September^. At dinner at the public table [of the
hotel] met a man possessed of the veritable gambling fever.
He has been playing many days at the Casino (roulette
and trente-et-quarante). He believes thoroughly in his
' system', and yet, inconsistently, believes in luck : e.g., 36
came into his head as he was walking down the street
towards the Casino to-day; and it made him back it, and
he won. He plays all the afternoon and all the evening.
"His system appears to be that of watching for
numbers which have not turned up for a long time ; but
I am not sure.

"He is a little man ; military looking ; large iron-grey
moustache standing out detached ; iron-grey hair ; fresh
crimson skin. Produces the book, ruled in vertical col-
umns, in which he records results. Discusses his system
incessantly with the big grey-bearded man near. Can
talk of nothing else. , . . Has lost to-day 4500 francs.
Has won back some is going to play to-night till he has
won it all back, and if he can profit enough to pay the ex-
penses of his trip on the Continent he will be satisfied.
His friend with the beard, who seems to live in the hotel
permanently, commends him by a nod and a word now
and then, but not emphatically."

" September 24. After breakfast unexpectedly saw the
gambler standing outside the hotel-entrance without a
hat, looking wild, and by comparison with the previous
night like a tree that has suddenly lost its leaves. He
came up to me ; said he had had no luck on the previous
night ; had plunged, and lost heavily. He had not enough
money left to take him home third-class. Is going to Monte
Carlo in November with 2000 to retrieve his losses. . . .

"We left between 12 and i. The gambler left at the
same time by a train going in the opposite direction, and

56 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

was carefully put into a third-class carriage by his friend
of the hotel, who bought his ticket. He wore a green-
grey suit and felt hat, looking bleak-faced and absent, and
seemed passive in the other's hands. His friend is ap-
parently a decoy from the Casino.''

Mrs. Hardy, not being a good walker, had brought
her bicycle as many people did just then, bicycling being
wildly popular at the time, and Flanders being level.
After they had paid twenty-four francs duty at Ostend for
importing it, it had several adventures in its transit from
place to place, was always getting lost, and miraculously
turned up again when they were just enjoying the relief of
finding themselves free of it. At Liege it really did seem
gone, Hardy having watched the transfer of all the lug-
gage at a previous junction, and the bicycle not being
among it. Having given up thinking of it they were
hailed by an official, who took them with a mysterious
manner to a store room some way off, unlocked it, and
with a leer said, to Hardy's dismay : "Le veloze!"- How it
had got there they did not know.

At Spa they drove to the various fountains, examined
the old gaming-house in the Rue Vauxhall where those
that were now cold skeletons had burnt hot with the
excitement of play, thought of the town's associations in
fact and fiction, of the crowned heads of all the countries
of Europe who had found their pleasure and cure at this
Mother of Watering-places now shrunk small like any
other ancient matron.

Getting back to Brussels they put up for association's
sake at the same hotel they had patronized twenty years
before, but found it had altered for the worse since those
bright days. Hardy again went out to Waterloo, which
had been his chief reason for stopping at the Belgian
capital, and no doubt made some more observations with
a view to The Dynasts , to which he at this time had given

AET. 55-57 MORE ON JUDE 57

the provisional name of "Europe in Throes ". All he
writes thereon in his pocket-book while in Brussels is :

"Europe in Throes.
"Three Parts. Five Acts each.

"Characters: Burke, Pitt, Napoleon, George III., Well-
ington . . . and many others."

But he set down more copious notes for the drama else-
where. It is believed he gave time to further conjectures
as to the scene of the Duchess's Ball, which he had con-
sidered when here before, and on which it may be re-
membered there is a note in The Dynast s y ending, "The
event happened less than a century ago, but the spot is
almost as phantasmal in its elusive mystery as towered
Camelot, the Palace of Priam, or the Hill of Calvary".
Concerning the scene of the battle itself he writes :
"October 2. To Field of Waterloo. Walked alone
from the English line along the Charleroi Road to 'La
Belle Alliance'. Struck with the nearness of the French
and English lines to each other. Shepherds with their
flocks and dogs, men ploughing, two cats, and myself, the
only living creatures on the field."

Returning homeward through Ostend a little later
they found the hotels and shops closed and boarded up,
and the Digue empty, Mrs. Hardy being the single
woman bicyclist where there had been so many.

"MAX GATE. October 17. A novel, good, microscopic
touch in Crabbe [which would strike one trained in archi-
tecture]. He gives surface without outline, describing
his church by telling the colour of the lichens.

"Poetry. Perhaps I can express more fully in verse
ideas and emotions which run counter to the inert crystal-
lized opinion hard as a rock which the vast body of
men have vested interests in supporting. To cry out in

58 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

a passionate poem that (for instance) the Supreme Mover
or Movers, the Prime Force or Forces,, must be either
limited in power, unknowing, or cruel which is obvious
enough, and has been for centuries will cause them
merely a shake of the head ; but to put it in argumenta-
tive prose will make them sneer, or foam, and set all the
literary contortionists jumping upon me, a harmless
agnostic, as if I were a clamorous atheist, which in their
crass illiteracy they seem to think is the same thing, . . .
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the
Inquisition might have let him alone",

"1897. January 27. To-day has length, breadth,
thickness, colour, smell, voice. As soon as it becomes
yesterday it is a thin layer among many layers, without
substance, colour, or articulate sound. "

" January 30. Somebody says that the final dictum of
the 'Ion' of Plato is 'inspiration, not art*. The passage
is 0etov KOI pr) rsyyiKov. And what is really meant by
it is, I think, more nearly expressed by the words 'inspi-
ration, not technicality 7 'art' being too comprehensive
in English to use here/'

"February 4. Title: 'Wessex Poems: with Sketches
of their Scenes by the Author'."

"February 10. In spite of myself I cannot help notic-
ing countenances and tempers in objects of scenery, e.g.
trees, hills, houses."

"February 21. My mother's grandfather, Swetman
a descendant of the Christopher Swetman of 1631 men-
tioned in the History of the County as a small landed pro-
prietor in the parish used to have an old black bedstead,
with the twelve apostles on it in carved figures > each
about one foot six inches high. Some of them got loose,
and the children played with them as dolls. What
became of that bedstead ?"
, "March i. Make a lyric of the speech of Hyllus at the

AET. 55-57 MORE ON JUDE 59

close of the Trachiniae" (It does not appear that this
was ever carried out.)

At the beginning of March a dramatization of Tess of
the d j Urbervilles was produced in America with much suc-
cess by Mr. Fiske. About the same date Hardy went
with Sir Francis Jeune to a banquet at the Mansion
House in honour of Mr. Bayard, the American Ambassa-
dor, on his leaving England, which Hardy described as a
"brilliant gathering", though the night was so drenching
and tempestuous as to blow off house-roofs and flood
cellars. In the middle of the month a revised form of a
novel of his which had been published serially in 1892 as
The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Tempera-
mentj was issued in volume form as The Well-Beloved.
The theory on which this fantastic tale of a subjective
idea was constructed is explained in the preface to the
novel, and again exemplified in a poem bearing the same
name, written about this time and published with Poems
of the* Past and the Present in 1901 the theory of the
transmigration of the ideal beloved one, who only exists
in the lover, from material woman to material woman
as exemplified also by Proust many years later. Certain
critics affected to find unmentionable moral atrocities in
its pages, but Hardy did not answer any of the charges
further than by defining in a letter to a literary periodical
the scheme of the story somewhat more fully than he
had done in the preface :

"Not only was it published serially five years ago but
it was sketched many years before that date, when I was
comparatively a young man, and Interested in the Pla-
tonic Idea, which, considering its charm and its poetry,
one could well wish to be interested in always. . . *
There is, of course, underlying the fantasy followed by the
visionary artist the truth that all men are pursuing a
shadow, the Unattainable, and I venture to hope that this
may redeem the tragi-comedy from the charge of frivol-

60 TESS, JUDE, AND END OF PROSE 1896-97

ity. . . . 'Avice* is an old name common in the county,

and * Caro * (like all the other surnames) is an imitation of a

local name . . . this particular modification having been

adopted becauseofits resemblance to theltalianfor'dearY*

In reply to an inquiry from an editor he wrote :

"No: I do not intend to answer the article on The

Well-Beloved. Personal abuse best answers itself. What

struck me, next to its mendacious malice, was its mala-

droitness, as if the writer were blinded by malignity. . . .

Upon those who have read the book the review must have

produced the amazed risibility I remember feeling at

Wilding's assertions when as a youth I saw Footers

comedy of The Liar. . . . There is more fleshliness in

The Loves of the Triangles than in this story at least to

me. To be sure, there is one explanation which should

not be overlooked : a reviewer himself afflicted with 'sex

mania' might review so a thing terrible to think of."

Such were the odd effects of Hardy's introduction of
the subjective theory of love into modern fiction, and so
ended his prose contributions to literature (beyond two or
three short sketches to fulfil engagements), his experi-
ences of the few preceding years having killed all his
interest in this form of imaginative work, which had ever
been secondary to his interest in verse.

A letter from him to Swinburne was written about this
time, in which he says :

"I must thank you for your kind note about my fan-
tastic little tale [The Well-Beloved], which, if it can make,
in its better parts 3 any faint claim to imaginative feeling,
will owe something of such feeling to you, for I often thought
of lines of yours during the writing ; and indeed, was not
able to resist the quotation of your words now and then.

"And this reminds me that one day, when examining
several English imitations of a well-known fragment of
Sappho, I interested myself in trying to strike out a better
equivalent for it than the commonplace 'Thou, too, shalt

55-57 MORE ON JUDE 61

die', etc., which all the translators had used during the
last hundred years. I then stumbled upon your c Thee, too,
theyears shall cover*, and all my spirit for poetic pains died
out of me. Those few words present, I think, the finest
drama of Death and Oblivion, so to speak, in our tongue.

**

" Believe me to be

"Yours very sincerely,

"THOMAS HARDY.

"P.S.I should have added that The Well-Edoved\$
a fanciful exhibition of the artistic nature, and has, I
think, some little foundation in fact. I have been much
surprised, and even grieved, by a ferocious review at-
tributing an immoral quality to the tale. The writer's
meaning is beyond me. T. H."

PART II
VERSE, TO THE END OF "THE DYNASTS 1

CHAPTER V
COLLECTING OLD POEMS AND MAKING NEW

1897-1898: Aet. 57-58

THE misrepresentations of the last two or three years
affected but little, if at al! 3 the informed appreciation of
Hardy's writings, being heeded almost entirely by those
who had not read him ; and turned out ultimately to be
the best thing that could have happened ; for they well-
nigh compelled him, in his own judgement at any rate, if
he wished to retain any shadow of self-respect, to aban-
don at once a form of literary art he had long intended to
abandon at some indefinite time, and resume openly that
form of it which had always been more instinctive with
him, and which he had just been able to keep alive from
his early years, half in secrecy, under the pressure of
magazine writing. He abandoned it with all the less
reluctance in that the novel was, in his own words, "grad-
ually losing artistic form, with a beginning, middle, and
end, and becoming a spasmodic inventory of items, which
has nothing to do with art".

The change, after all, was not so great as it seemed. It
was not as if he had been a writer of novels proper, and
as more specifically understood, that is, stories of modern
artificial life and manners showing a certain smartness of
treatment. He had mostly aimed at keeping his narratives
close to natural life and as near to poetry in their subject
as the conditions would allow, and had often regretted that
those conditions would not let him keep them nearer still.

65

66 VERSE 1897-98

Nevertheless he had not known, whilst a writer of
prose, whether he might not be driven to society novels,
and hence, as has been seen, he had kept, at casual times,
a record of his experiences in social life, though doing it
had always been a drudgery to him. It was now with a
sense of great comfort that he felt he might leave off
further chronicles of that sort. But his thoughts on liter-
ature and life were often written down still, and from his
notes much of which follows has been abridged.

He had already for some time been getting together
the poems which made up the first volume of verse that he
was about to publish. In date they ranged from 1865 in-
termittently onwards, the middle period of his novel-writ-
ing producing very few or none, but of late years they had
been added to with great rapidity, though at first with
some consternation he had found an awkwardness in get-
ting back to an easy expression in numbers after abandon-
ing it for so many years ; but that soon wore off.

He and his wife went to London as usual this year
(1897), but did not take a house there. After two or
three weeks' stay they adopted the plan of living some
way out, and going up and down every few days, the place
they made their temporary centre being Basingstoke.
In this way they saw London friends, went to concerts at
the Imperial Institute (the ochestra this season being the
famous Vienna band under Edouard Strauss), saw one or
two Ibsen plays, and the year's pictures. Being near
they also went over the mournful relics of that city of the
past, Silchester ; till in the middle of June they started
for Switzerland, thus entirely escaping the racket of the
coming Diamond Jubilee, and the discomfort it would
bring upon people like them who had no residence of their
own in London.

All the world, including the people of fashion habitu-
ally abroad, was in London or arriving there, and the
charm of a lonely Continent impressed the twain much*

AET. 57-58 OLD POEMS AND NEW 67

The almost empty Channel steamer, the ease with which
they crossed France from Havre by Paris, Dijon, and
Pontarlier to Neuchatel, the excellent rooms accorded
them by obsequious hosts at the hotels in Switzerland,
usually frequented by English and American tourists,
made them glad they had come. On the actual day, the
2oth, they were at Berne, where they celebrated it by
attending a Jubilee Concert in the Cathedral, with the
few others of their fellow-countryfolk who remained in
the town. At Interlaken the comparative solitude was
just as refreshing, the rosy glow from the Jungfrau, visible
at three in the morning from Hardy's bedroom, seeming
an exhibition got up for themselves alone ; and a pathetic
procession of empty omnibuses went daily to and from
each railway train between shops that looked like a ban-
quet spread for people who delayed to come. They
drove up the valley to Grindelwald, and having been con-
veyed to Scheidegg, walked thence to the Wengern Alp
overlooking the scene of Manfred where a baby had just
been born, and where Hardy was more impressed by the
thundering rumble of unseen avalanches on the immense
Jungfrau immediately facing than by the sight of the
visible ones.

The next day, or the next following, The Times' ac-
count of the celebration in London of Queen Victoria's
Diamond Jubilee reached Hardy's hands, and he took it
out and read it in the snowy presence of the maiden-mon-
arch that dominated the whole place.

It was either in the train as it approached Interlaken,
or while he was there looking at the peak, that there
passed through his mind the sentiments afterwards
expressed in the lines called "The Schreckhorn : with
thoughts of Leslie Stephen".

After a look at Lauterbrunnen, the Staubbach, the
Lake and Castle of Thun, they stopped at the Hotel
Gibbon, Lausanne, Hardy not having that aversion from

68 VERSE 1897-98

the historian of the Decline and Fall which Ruskin recom-
mended. He found that, though not much might remain
of the original condition of the building or the site, the re-
moter and sloping part of the garden, with its acacias and
irregular contours, could not have been much changed
from what it was when Gibbon haunted it, and finished
his history. Accordingly his recaller sat out there till mid-
night on June 27, and imagined the historian closing his
last page on the spot, as described in his Autobiography:

"It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of
June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that
I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer house
in my garden. After laying down my pen I took several
turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which com-
mands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the moun-
tains."

It is uncertain whether Hardy chose that particular
evening for sitting out in the garden because he knew that
June 27th was Gibbon's date of conclusion, or whether
the coincidence of dates was accidental. The later
author's imaginings took the form of the lines subjoined,
which were printed in Poems of the Past and the Present.

LAUSANNE

In Gibbon's old garden: 11-12 p.m.
June 27, 1897

A spirit seems to pass,
Formal in pose, but grave withal and grand :
He contemplates a volume of his hand,
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed,
With "It is .finished !" And at the alley's end
He turns, and when on me his glances bend
As from the Past comes speech small, muted, yet composed.

AET. 57-58 OLD POEMS AND NEW 69

"How fares the Truth now ? Ill ?
Do pens but slily further her advance ?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance ?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still ?

"Still rule those minds on earth
At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled :
* Truth like a bastard comes into the world
Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth* ?" *

From Lausanne, making excursions to Ouchy, and by
steamer to Territet, Chillon, Vevey, and other places on
the lake, they afterwards left for Zermatt, going along the
valley of the Rhone amid intense heat till they gradually
rose out of it beside the roaring torrent of the Visp. That
night Hardy looked out of their bedroom window in the
Hotel Mt. Cervin, and "Could see where the Matterhorn
was by the absence of stars within its outline", it being
too dark to see the surface of the mountain itself although
it stood facing him. He meant to make a poem of the
strange feeling implanted by this black silhouette of the
mountain on the pattern of the constellation ; but never
did, so far as is known. However, the mountain inspired
him to begin one sonnet, finished some time after that
entitled "To the Matterhorn" the terrible accident on
whose summit, thirty- two years before this date, had so
impressed him at the time of its occurrence.

While walking from Zermatt with a Russian gentle-
man to the Riffel-Alp Hotel, whither Mrs. Hardy had
preceded him on a pony, he met some English ladies,
who informed him of the mysterious disappearance of an

x The quotation is from The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, the
passage running as follows: "Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any
outward touch, as the sunbeam ; though this ill hap wait on her nativity,
that she never comes into the world, but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her forth; till Time, the midwife rather than
the mother of truth, have washed and salted the infant and declared her
legitimate."

70 VERSE 1897-98

Englishman somewhere along the very path he had been
following. Having lunched at the hotel and set his wife
upon the pony again he sent her on with the guide, and
slowly searched all the way down the track for some clue
to the missing man, afterwards writing a brief letter to
The Times to say there was no sign visible of foul play
anywhere on the road. The exertion of the search, after
walking up the mountain-path in the hot morning sun, so
exhausted his strength that on arriving at Geneva,
whither they went after leaving Zermatt, he was taken so
ill at the Hotel de la Paix that he had to stay in bed.
Here as he lay he listened to the plashing of a fountain
night and day just outside his bedroom window, the case-
ments of which were kept widely open on account of the
heat. It was the fountain beside which the Austrian Em-
press was murdered shortly after by an Italian anarchist.
His accidental nearness in time and place to the spot of
her doom moved him much when he heard of it, since
thereby hung a tale. She was a woman whose beauty, as
shown in her portraits, had attracted him greatly in his
youthful years, and had inspired some of his early verses,
the same romantic passion having also produced the out-
line of a novel upon her, which he never developed.

While he was recovering at Geneva Mrs. Hardy found
by chance the tomb of an ancestor who had died there.
But of Geneva, its lake, Diodati, Montalegre, Ferney,
and the neighbourhood, he merely remarks: "These
haunts of the illustrious ! Ah, but they are gone now, and
care for their chosen nooks no more !"

Again in London in July he expressed views on scenery
in the following letter :

To the Editor of the "Saturday Review".

"Sir, I am unable to reply to your inquiry on "The
Best Scenery I know'. A week or two ago I was looking at
the inexorable faces of the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn :

AET. 57-58 OLD POEMS AND NEW 71

a few days later at the Lake of Geneva with all its soft
associations. But, which is "best 5 of things that do not
compare at all, and hence cannot be reduced to a common
denominator ? At any given moment we like best what
meets the mood of that moment,

"Not to be entirely negative, however, I may say
that, in my own neighbourhood, the following scenes
rarely or never fail to delight beholders :

"i. View from Castle Hill, Shaftesbury.

"2. View from Pilsdon Pen,

"3. New Forest vistas near Brockenhurst.

"4. The River Dart.

"5. The coast from Trebarwith Strand to Beeny
Cliff, Cornwall."

From London he returned to Max Gate, and with
Mrs. Hardy wandered off to Wells Cathedral, and on-
wards to Frome and Longleat, whence after examining
the library and the architecture heproceeded to Salisbury,
a place in which he was never tired of sojourning, partly
from personal associations and partly because its graceful
cathedral pile was the most marked instance in England
of an architectural intention carried out to the full.

"August 10, Salisbury. Went into the Close late at
night. The moon was visible through both the north and
south clerestory windows to me standing on the turf on
the north side. . . . Walked to the west front, and
watched the moonlight creep round upon the statuary of
the facade stroking tentatively and then more and
more firmly the prophets, the martyrs, the bishops, the
kings, and the queens. . . . Upon the whole the Close of
Salisbury, under the full summer moon on a windless
midnight, is as beautiful a scene as any I know in Eng-
land or for the matter of that elsewhere.

"Colonel T. W. Higginson of the United States, who
is staying at the same hotel as ourselves, introduced him-
self to us. An amiable, well-read man, whom I was glad to

72 VERSE 1897-98

meet. He fought in the Civil War. Went with him to
hunt up the spot of the execution of the Duke of Bucking-
ham, whose spirit is said to haunt King's House still."
After re- visiting Stonehenge he remarks :
"The misfortune of ruins to be beheld nearly always
at noonday by visitors, and not at twilight.

"August 10, continued. 'Thedaygoethaway . . . the
shadows of the evening are stretched out . * . I set watch-
men over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trum-
pet. But they said. We will not hearken. Therefore hear,
ye nations. ... To what purpose cometh there to me in-
cense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country ?
Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacri-
fices sweet ur.to me/ Passages from the first lesson (Jer.
vi.) at the Cathedral this afternoon. E. and I present. A
beautiful chapter, beautifully read by the old Canon."

"August 13. All tragedy is grotesque if you allow
yourself to see it as such. A risky indulgence for any who
have an aspiration towards a little goodness or greatness
of heart ! Yet there are those who do."

"August 15. It is so easy nowadays to call any force
above or under the sky by the name of 'God' and so
pass as orthodox cheaply, and fill the pocket !"

In September he passed a few pleasant days in bicy-
cling about the neighborhood with Mr. Rudyard Kipling,
who had an idea just at that time that he would like to
buy a house near Weymouth. They found a suitable
house for sale at Rodwell, commanding a full view of
Portland Roads; but difficulties arose when inquiries
were made, and Mr. Kipling abandoned the idea.

Bicycling was now in full spirit with the Hardys
and, indeed, with everybody and many were the places
they visited by that means.

"October 10, Am told a singularly creepy story
absolutely true, I am assured of a village girl near here
who was about to be married* A watch had been given

AET. 57-58 OLD POEMS AND NEW 73

her by a former lover, his own watch, just before their
marriage was prevented by his unexpected death of con-
sumption. She heard it going in her box at waking on the
morning of the wedding with the second lover, though it
had not been touched for years.

"Lizzy D [the monthly nurse who had attended at

Hardy's birth] told my mother that she walked eighteen (?)
miles the day after her own baby was born. . . . She was
an excellent nurse, much in demand ; of infinite kind-
heartedness, humour, and quaintness, and as she lived in
a cottage quite near our house at Bockhampton, she as it
were kept an eye upon the Hardy family always, and
being her neighbour gave my mother the preference in
clashing cases. She used to tell a story of a woman who
came to her to consult her about the ghost of another
woman she declared she had seen, and who ' troubled her'
the deceased wife of the man who was courting her.

"'How long hev 5 the woman been dead ?- 1 said.

"Many years P

"'Oh, that were no ghost. Now if she'd only been
dead a month or two, and you were making her husband
your fancy-man, there might have been something in
your story. But Lord, much can she care about him after
years and years in better company I'"

To return to 1897. Nothing more of much account
occurred to Hardy during its lapse, though it may be
mentioned that Jude y of which only a mutilated version
could be printed as a serial in England and America, ap-
peared in a literal translation in Germany, running
through several months of a well-known periodical in
Berlin and Stuttgart without a single abridgment.

"1898. February 5. Write a prayer, or hymn, to One
not Omnipotent, but hampered; striving for our good,
but unable to achieve it except occasionally.'* [This idea
of a limited God of goodness, often dwelt on by Hardy,
was expounded ably and at length in MacTaggart's Some

74 VERSE 1897-98

Dogmas of Religion several years later, and led to a friend-
ship which ended only with the latter's death.]

As the spring drew on they entered upon their yearly
residence of a few months in London this time taking^
flat in Wynnstay Gardens, Kensington. Hardydj^ome
reading at the British Mustuni^^^^i^^oT/ie Z)y-
nasts y and incidentally stum^fM upon some details that
suggested to him the Wa^noo episode embodied in a poem
called "The Peasantys Confession". He also followed up
the concerts at the/Imperial Institute mostly neglected by
Londoners. One/visit gave him occasion for the following
note, the orchestra this year being from the Scala, Milan :

"Scene at the Imperial Institute this afternoon. Rain
floating down in wayward drops. Not a soul except my-
self having tea in the gardens. The west sky begins to
brighten. The red, blue, and white fairy lamps are like
rubies, sapphires, turquoises, and pearls in the wet. The
leaves of the trees, not yet of full size, are dripping, and
the waiting-maids stand in a group with nothing to do.
Band playing a 'Contemplazione' by Luzzi."

On June 24th, declining to write an Introduction to a
proposed Library Edition of Fielding's novels, he remarks :

"Fielding as a local novelist has never been clearly re-
garded, to my mind : and his aristocratic, even feudal,
attitude towards the peasantry (e.g., his view of Molly as
a 'slut' to be ridiculed, not as a simple girl, as worthy a
creation of Nature as the lovely Sophia) should be ex-
hibited strongly. But the writer could not well be a work-
ing novelist without his bringing upon himself a charge
of invidiousness."

Back in Dorset in July he resumed cycling more vigor-
ously than ever, and during the summer went to Bristol,
Gloucester, Cheltenham, Sherborne, Poole, Weymouth,
and many other places sometimes with Mrs. Hardy,
sometimes with his brother.

AET. 57-58 OLD POEMS AND NEW 75

In the middle of December Wessex Poems was pub-
lished ; and verse being a new mode of expression with
him in print he sent copies to friends, among them one to
Leslie Stephen, who said :

"It gave me a real pleasure. I am glad to think that
you remember me as a friend. ... I am always pleased
to remember that Far from the Madding Crowd came out
under my command. I then admired the poetry which was
diffused through the prose ; and can recognize the same
note in the versified form. ... I will not try to criticize
or distinguish, but will simply say that they have pleased
me and reminded me vividly of the old time. I have, as you
probably know, gone through much since then. . . ."

"WESSEX PpEKlS" AND OTHERS
1899-1900: Aet* 58-60

IN the early week& of this year the poems were reviewed
in the customary periodicals mostly in a friendly tone,
even in a tone of respect, and with praise for many pieces
in the volume ; though by some critics not without um-
brage at Hardy's having taken the liberty to adopt an-
other vehicle of expression than prose-fiction without
consulting them. It was probably these reviews that
suggested to Hardy several reflections on poetry and
criticism about this time, and the following gleanings of
his opinions are from the rough entries he made thereon.
Some no doubt were jotted down hastily, and might have
been afterwards revised.

He observes that he had been under no delusion about
the coldness and even opposition he would have to en-
counter at any rate from some voices in openly issuing
verse after printing nothing (with trifling exceptions) but
prose for so many years.

Almost all the fault-finding was, in fact, based on the
one great antecedent conclusion that an author who has
published prose first, and that largely, must necessarily
express himself badly in verse, no reservation being added
to except cases in which he may have published prose for
temporary or compulsory reasons, or prose of a poetical
kind, or have written verse first of all, or for a long time
intermediately.

76

AET. 5 8~6o "WESSEX POEMS" AND OTHERS 77

In criticism generally, the fact that the date of pub-
lication is but an accident in the life of a literary creation,
that the printing of a book is the least individual occur-
rence in the history of its contents, is often overlooked.
In its visible history the publication is what counts, and
that alone. It is then that the contents start into being
for the outside public. In the present case, although it
was shown that many of the verses had been written be-
fore their author dreamt of novels, the critics' view was
little affected that he had " at the eleventh hour'', as they
untruly put it, taken up a hitherto uncared for art.

It may be observed that in the art-history of the cen-
tury there was an example staring them in the face of a
similar modulation from one style into another by a great
artist. Verdi was the instance, "that amazing old man"
as he was called. Someone of insight wrote concerning
him: "'From the ashes of his early popularity, from //
Trovatore and its kind, there arose on a sudden a sort of
phoenix Verdi. Had he died at Mozart's death-age he
would now be practically unknown." And another:
"With long life enough Verdi might have done almost
anything ; but the trouble with him was that he had only
just arrived at maturity at the age of threescore and ten
or thereabouts, so that to complete his life he ought to
have lived a hundred and fifty years."

But probably few literary critics discern the solidar-
ity of all the arts. Curiously enough Hardy himself dwelt
upon it in a poem that seems to have been little under-
stood, though the subject is of such interest. It is called
"Rome : The Vatican : Sala delle Muse" ; in which a sort
of composite Muse addresses him :

"Be not perturbed", said she. "Though apart in fame,
I and my sisters are one.'*

In short, this was a particular instance of the general
and rather appalling conclusion to which he came had

78 VERSE 1899-1900

Indeed known before that a volume of poetry, by clever
manipulation, can be made to support any a priori theory
about its quality. Presuppose its outstanding feature to
be the defects aforesaid ; instances can be found. Presup-
pose, as here was done, that it is overloaded with deriv^-
tions from the Latin or Greek when really bglaw^lihe
average in such words ; they au>btr-^^
that Wordsworth is unorthodox : instances can be found ;
that Byron is devout ;.kistances can also be found. [The
foregoing paragraphs are abridged from memoranda
which Hardy set down, apparently for publication;
though he never published them.]

He wrote somewhere: "There is no new poetry; but
the new poet if he carry the flame on further (and if not
he is no ntw poet) comes with a new note. And that
new note it is that troubles the critical waters.

"Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion
must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired
by art."

In the reception of this and later volumes of Hardy's
poems there was, he said, as regards form, the inevitable
ascription to ignorance of what was really choice after full
knowledge. That the author loved the art of concealing
art was undiscerned. For instance, as to rhythm. Years
earlier he had decided that too regular a beat was bad art.
He had fortified himself in his opinion by thinking of the
analogy of architecture, between which art and that of
poetry he had discovered, to use his own words, that there
existed a close and curious parallel, both arts, unlike some
others, having to carry a rational content inside their artis-
tic form. He knew that in architecture cunning irregu-
larity is of enormous worth, and it is obvious that he
carried on into his verse, perhaps in part unconsciously,
the Gothic art-principle in which he had been trained
the principle of spontaneity, found in mouldings, tracery,
and such like resulting in tlie "unforeseen" (as it has

AET. 5 8-6o "WESSEX POEMS " AND OTHERS 79

been called) character of his metres and stanzas, that of
stress rather than of syllable, poetic texture rather than
poetic veneer ; the latter kind of thing, under the name of
"constructed ornament", being what he, in common with
every Gothic student, had been taught to avoid as the
plague. He shaped his poetry accordingly, introducing
metrical pauses, *ard reversed beats; and found for his
trouble that some particular line of a poem exemplifying
this principle was greeted with a would-be jocular remark
that such a line "did not make for immortality". The
same critic might have gone to one of our cathedrals (to
follow up the analogy of architecture), and on discovering
that the carved leafage of some capital or spandrel in the
best period of Gothic art strayed freakishly out of its
bounds over the moulding, where by rule it had no busi-
ness to be, or that the enrichments of a string-course were
not accurately spaced ; or that there was a sudden blank
in a wall where a window was to be expected from formal
measurement, have declared with equally merry con-
viction, "This does not make for immortality".

One case of the kind, in which the poem "On Stur-
minster Foot-Bridge" was quoted with the remark that
one could make as good music as that out of a milk-cart,
betrayed the reviewer's ignorance of any perception that
the metre was intended to be onomatopoeic, plainly as it
was shown ; and another in the same tone disclosed that
the reviewer had tried to scan the author's sapphics as
heroics.

If any proof were wanted that Hardy was not at this
time and later the apprentice at verse that he was sup-
posed to be, it could be found in an examination of his
studies over many years. Among his papers were quanti-
ties of notes on rhythm and metre : with outlines and ex-
periments in innumerable original measures, some of
which he adopted from time to time. These verse skele-
tons were mostly blank, and only designated by the

8o VERSE 1899-1900

usual marks for long and short syllables, accentuations,
etc., but they were occasionally made up of "nonsense
verses" such as, he said, were written when he was a boy
by students of Latin prosody with the aid of a " Gradus ".
Lastly, Hardy had a born sense of humour, even a top
keen sense occasionally : but his poetry was sometimes
placed by editors in the hands qf *:evWej:s -deficient in
that quality. Even if they w%e accustomed to Dickensian
humour they were not -to SwJftta^.J!ence it unfortu-
nately happened that verses of a satirical, dry, caustic, or
farcical cast were regarded by them with the deepest
seriousness. In, one case the tragic nature of his verse
was instanced by the ballad called "The Bride-night
Fire", or "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley V, the criticism
being by an accomplished old friend of his own, Frederic
Harrison, who deplored the painful nature of the bride-
groom's end in leaving only a bone behind him. This
piece of work Hardy had written and published when
quite a young man, and had hesitated to reprint because
of its two pronounced obviousness as a jest.

But he had looked the before-mentioned obstacles in
the face, and their consideration did not move him much.
He had written his poems entirely because he liked doing
them, without any ulterior thought ; because he wanted
to say the things they contained and would contain. He
offered his publishers to take on his own shoulders the risk
of producing the volume, so that if nobody bought it they
should not be out of pocket. They were kind enough to
refuse this offer, and took the risk on themselves ; and
fortunately they did not suffer.

A more serious meditation of Hardy's at this time
than that on critics was the following :

"January (1899). No man's poetry can be truly
judged till its last line is written. What is the last line ?
The death of the poet. And hence there is this quaint
consolation to any writer of verse that it may be imper-

AET. 58-60 WESSEX POEMS " AND OTHERS 81

ishable for all that anybody can tell him to the contrary ;
and that if worthless he can never know it, unless he be a
greater adept at self-criticism than poets usually are/'

Writing to Hardy in March about her late husband's
tastes in literature Mrs. Coventry Patrnore observes :
\. . . It shows how constant he was to his loves.
^i he first met with the book vide ante] to
1 896 he continu^ of Blue Eyes read aloud to

him. Each time he felt the saw shock of surprise and
pleasure at its consummate art arid, pathos. In illness,
when he asked for A Pair of Blue Eye*\one knew he was
able to enjoy again/*

A correspondence on another matter than literature
may be alluded to here. Mr, W. T. Stead had asked
Hardy to express his opinion on "A Crusade of Peace" in
a periodical he was about to publish under the name of
War against War. In the course of his reply Hardy wrote :

"As a preliminary, all civilized nations might at least
show their humanity by covenanting that no horses
should be employed in battle except for transport. Sol-
diers, at worst, know what they are doing, but these
animals are denied even the poor possibilities of glory
and reward as a compensation for their sufferings."

His reply brought upon Hardy, naturally, scoffs at his
unpractical tender-heartedness, and on the other hand,
strong expressions of agreement.

In the following April (1899) the Hardys were again
in London, where as in the previous year they took a flat
in Wynnstay Gardens, though not the same one. They
saw their friends as usual, on one of whom Hardy makes
this observation after a call from him :

"When a person has gone, though his or her presence
was not much desired, we regret the withdrawal of the
grain of value in him, and overlook the mass of chaff that

82 VERSE 1899-1900

spoilt it. We realize that the essence of his personality
was a human heart, though the form was uninviting."

"It would be an amusing fact, if it were not one that
leads to such bitter strife, that the conception of a First
Cause which the theist calls * God ', and the conception of
the same that the so-styled atheist calls f no- God', are
nowadays almost exactly id^r,tL<tl. So that only a minor
literary question of terminology prevents their shaking
hands in agreement, and dwelling together in unity ever
after.'*

At the beginning of June Hardy was staying at a
country-house not many miles from London, and among

the guests was the young Duchess of M , a lady of

great beauty, who asked him if he would conduct her to
the grave of the poet Gray, which was within a walk*
Hardy did so and, standing half-balanced on one foot by
the grave (as is well known, it was also that of Gray's
mother), his friend recited in a soft voice the Elegy from
the first word to the last in leisurely and lengthy clearness
without an error (which Hardy himself could not have
done without some hitch in the order of the verses). With
startling suddenness, while duly commending her per-
formance, he seemed to have lived through the experience
before. Then he realized what it was that had happened :
in love of recitation, attitude, and poise, tone of voice,
and readiness of memory, the fair lady had been the
duplicate of the handsome dairymaid who had insisted on
his listening to her rehearsal of the long and tedious
gospels, when he taught in the Sunday school as a youth
of fifteen. What a thin veneer is that of rank and educa-
tion over the natural woman, he would remark.

On the 1 8th he met A. E. Housman (the Shropshire
Lad) for the first time probably, and on the 2oth he
visited Swinburne at Putney, of which visit he too briefly
speaks ; observing, "Again much inclined to his engaging,

AE1;

r. 5 8~6o "WESSEX POEMS" AND OTHERS 83

fresh, frank, almost childlike manner. Showed me his in-
te resting editions, and talked of the play he was writing.
Promised to go again/' He also went a day or two later,
pcssibly owing to his conversation with Swinburne
(though he had been there before), to St. Mildred's, Bread
Street, with Sir George Douglas, where Shelley and Mary
Go^sin were married, and saw the register, with the sig-
natures of'SsdsdG and his wife as witnesses. The church
was almost unaltereH snrce* ems oet and Mary had knelt
there, and the vestry absolutely soynot having even re-
ceived a coat of paint as it seemed. Being probably in the
calling mood he visited George Merediti\iust afterwards,
and found him ' 'looking ruddy and well in^ve upper part ;
quite cheerful, enthusiastic and warm. Woild gladly see
him oftener, and must try to do so." At the end of the
month he rambled in Westminster Abbey at midnight by
the light of a lantern, having with some friends been ad-
mitted by Miss Bradley through the Deanery.

Hardy had suffered from rather bad influenza this
summer in town, and it left an affection of the eye behind
it which he had never known before ; and though he hoped
it might leave him on his return to Dorchester it followed
him there. He was, indeed, seldom absolutely free from it
afterwards.

In July he replied to a communication from the Ra-
tionalist Press Association, of which his friend Leslie
Stephen was an honorary associate:

"Though I am interested in the Society I feel it to be
one which would naturally compose itself rather of writers
on philosophy, science, and history, than of writers of
imaginative works, whose effect depends largely on de-
tachment. By belonging to a philosophic association
imaginative writers place themselves in this difficulty,
that they are misread as propagandist when they mean to
be simply artistic and delineative."

The pleasures of bicycling were now at their highest

84 VERSE 1899-100

appreciation., and many miles did Hardy and his wife, fyy
other companions, cover during the latter part of tf,
summer. He was not a long-distance cyclist, as was natu; ,
at fifty-nine, never exceeding forty to fifty miles a
but he kept vigorously going within the limit, this
and for several years after. His wife, though an i
ent walker, could almost equal him in cycle distances.

In October his sonnet on the departure of tlie troops
for the Boer War, which h^ witnessed at Southampton,
appeared in the Dauy Chronicle, and in November the
very popular versos called "The Going of the Battery"
were printed in the Graphic, the scene having been wit-
nessed at Dor Chester. In December "The Dead Drum-
mer" (afterwards called "Drummer Hodge") appeared
in Literature, and "A Christmas Ghost Story" in the
Westminster Gazette.

The latter months of this same year (1899) were sad-
dened for him by the sudden death of Sir Arthur Blom-
field, shortly before the date which had been fixed for a
visit to him at Broadway by Hardy and his wife. Thus
was snapped a friendship which had extended over thirty-
six years.

Hardy's memoranda on his thoughts and movements
particularly the latter which never reached the regu-
larity of a diary had of late grown more and more fitful,
and now (1900) that novels were past and done with,
nearly ceased altogether, such notes on scenes and func-
tions having been dictated by what he had thought prac-
tical necessity ; so that it becomes difficult to ascertain
what mainly occupied his mind, or what his social doings
were. His personal ambition in a worldly sense, which had
always been weak, dwindled to nothing, and for some years
after 1895 or J ^9^ ^ e requested that no record of his life
should be made. His verses he kept on writing from pleas-
ure in them. The poetic fantasy entitled "The Souls of
the Slain" was published in the Cornhillin the April of

AET. 5 8-6o "WESSEX POEMS" AND OTHERS 85

this year, and he and his wife went to London this month
according to custom, though instead of taking a flat or
house as in former years they stayed on at the West Cen-
tral Hotel in Southampton Row. He possibly thought it
advisable to economize, seeing that he had sacrificed the
chance of making a much larger income by not producing
more novels. When one considers that he might have
made himself a man of affluence in a few years by taking
the current of popularity as it served, writing "best
sellers", and ringing changes upon the novels he had
already written, his bias towards poetry must have been
instinctive and disinterested.

In a pocket-book of this date appears a diagram illus-
trating "the language of verse'' :

Verse
I Fanciful { Meditative | Sentimental | Passionate |

Language of Common Speech.

Poetic Diction

and the following note thereon :

"The confusion of thought to be observed in Words-
worth's teaching in his essay in the Appendix to Lyrical
Ballads seems to arise chiefly out of his use of the word
' imagination '. He should have put the matter somewhat
like this : In works of passion and sentiment (not 'imagina-
tion and sentiment') the language of verse is the language
of prose. In works of fancy (or imagination) , 'poetic dic-
tion' (of the real kind) is proper, and even necessary.
The diagram illustrates my meaning."

For some reason he spent time while here in hunting
up Latin hymns at the British Museum, and copies that
he made of several have been found, of dates ranging from
the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, by Thomas of

86 VERSE 1899-1900

Celano, Adam of S. Victor, John Mombaer, Jacob Baide,
etc. That English prosody might be enriched by adapt-
ing some of the verse-forms of these is not unlikely to
have been his view.

When they left London this year is uncertain, but we
find Hardy at the latter part of July bicycling about
Dorset with his friend, Mr. (later Sir) Hamo Thornycroft,
and in August entertaining Mr. A, E. Housman, Mr.
Clodd, and Sir Frederick Pollock, bicycling from Max
Gate to Portland Bill and back in one day with the last
named, a performance whose chief onerousness lay in
roughness of road surface and steepness of gradient.
Cycling went merrily along through August, September,
and into October, mostly with Mrs. Hardy and other
companions, reaching to the outskirts of the county and
into Somerset, Devon, and Hants. In October, declining
to be interviewed by the representative of the American
National Red Cross Society, he wrote as a substitute :

"A society for the relief of suffering is entitled to
every man's gratitude; and though, in the past century,
material growth has been out of all proportion to moral
growth, the existence of your Society leaves one not alto-
gether without hope that during the next hundred years
the relations between our inward and our outward prog-
ress may become less of a reproach to civilization."

In the same month he replied to the Rev. J. Alexander
Smith :

"On referring to the incident in Tess of the d'Urber-
villes to which you draw my attention, I do not find there
anything more than an opinion, or feeling, on lay baptism
by a person who was nettled at having his clerical minis-
tration of the rite repulsed. The truth or error of his
opinion is therefore immaterial. Nevertheless if it were
worth while it might be plausibly argued that to refuse
clerical performance and substitute lay performance not
from necessity but from pure obstinacy (as he held), might

AET. 58-60 "WESSEX POEMS" AND OTHERS 87

deprive that particular instance of lay baptism of its
validity."

At the very close of the year Hardy's much admired
poem on the Century's End, entitled "The Darkling
Thrush ", was published in a periodical.

[END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.]

CHAPTER VII

"POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT", AND OTHERS
1901-1903 : Aet. 60-63

MAY found them in London, and hearing music. At an
Ysaye Concert at Queen's Hall a passage in the descriptive
programme evidently struck him whether with amuse-
ment at the personifications in the rhetoric, or admiration
for it, is not mentioned for he takes the trouble to copy it :
"'The solo enters at the twelfth bar. . . . Later in
the movement a new theme is heard a brief episode, the
thematic material of the opening sufficing the composer's
needs. In the Adagio the basses announce and develop a
figure. Over this the soloists and first violins enter ', etc.
(Bach's Concerto in E.) I see them : black-headed, lark-
spurred fellows, marching in on five wires.

"May n. Leslie Stephen says: 'The old ideals have
become obsolete, and the new are not yet constructed. . , .
We cannot write living poetry on the ancient model. The
gods and heroes are too dead, and we cannot seriously
sympathize with . . . the idealized prize-fighter/ "

A few days later Hardy chronicles a feat of execution
by Kubelik at a concert he attended at St. James's Hall
that of playing " pizzicato" on his violin the air of
"The Last Rose of Summer " with Ernst's variations, and
fingering and bowing a rapid accompaniment at the same
time. At Mr. Maurice Hewlett's Madame Sarah Bern-
hardt talked to him pensively on her consciousness that

AET.6o-6 3 "POEMS PAST AND PRESENT" 89

she was getting old, but on his taking his wife a day or two
later to see her as the Due in M. Rostand's UAiglon she
appeared youthful enough, he said, "though unfortu-
nately too melodramatically lime-lighted fornaturalness ".

At the end of the month the well-known literary and
journalistic fraternity called the Whitefriars Club paid
Hardy a visit at Max Gate, where they were entertained
in a tent on the lawn. To diversify their journey from
London they had travelled the last ten miles by road in
open carriages, and the beautiful new summer dresses of
the ladies were encrusted with dust. But nobody minded
except perhaps some of the ladies themselves and the
visit was a most lively one, though the part of the country
they had driven through was not the most picturesque
part.

Thomas Hardy's mother, now in her eighty-eighth
year, was greatly interested to hear of this visit of the
Club to the home of her son. Her devoted daughters,
Mary and Katherine, promised to take her in her wheeled
chair, for she was no longer able to walk abroad as
formerly, to see the carriages drive past the end of a lane
leading from Higher Bockhampton to the foot of Yellow-
ham Hill, some three miles from Max Gate.

On the day appointed, the chair, its two attendants,
and its occupant, a little bright-eyed lady in a shady hat,
waited under some trees bordering the roadside for the
members of the Whitefriars Club to pass.

Mrs. Hardy had announced gaily that she intended to
wave her handkerchief to the travellers, but her more
sedate daughters urged that this was not to be done.
However, as soon as the dusty vehicles had whirled past
the old lady pulled out a handkerchief which she had
concealed under the rug covering her knees, and waved it
triumphantly at the disappearing party. So unquench-
able was her gay and youthful spirit even when approach-
ing her ninetieth year.

90 VERSE 1901-03

Long afterwards one member of the visiting party said
to the present writer : "If we had known who that was,
what cheers there would have been, what waving of
handkerchiefs, what a greeting for Thomas Hardy's
mother!"

In a letter on Rationalism written about this time, but
apparently not sent, he remarks :

"My own interest lies largely in non-rationalistic sub-
jects, since non-rationality seems, so far as one can per-
ceive, to be the principle of the Universe. By which I do
not mean foolishness, but rather a principle for which
there is no exact name, lying at the indifference point
between rationality and irrationality."

In reply to the letter of an inquirer as to the preserva-
tion of the prospect from Richmond Hill, he wrote, loth
June 1901 :

"I have always been in love with Richmond Hill the
Lass included and though I think I could produce a few
specimens from this part of the country that would be
fairly even with it, or her, in point of beauty, I am grieved
to hear that the world-famed view is in danger of dis-
figurement. I cannot believe that any such foolish local
policy will be persevered in."

To Dr. Arnaldo Cervesato of Rome :

"June 20, 1901.

"I do not think that there will be any permanent re-
vival of the old transcendental ideals ; but I think there
may gradually be developed an Idealism of Fancy ; that is,
an idealism in which fancy is no longer tricked out and
made to masquerade as belief, but is frankly and honestly
accepted as an imaginative solace in the lack of any sub-
stantial solace to be found in life."

"July 8. Pictures. My weakness has always been to
prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the

THOMAS HARDY, AGED 60

AET. 60-63 "POEMS PAST AND PRESENT" 91

trivial intention of an accomplished one : in other words, I
am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant
than in the high execution of a feeble thinker."

During the seven weeks ensuing he was preparing for
the press a number of lyrics and other verses which had
accumulated since Wessex Poems appeared, and sent off
the manuscript to the publishers at the end of August.
It was published in the middle of November under the
title of Poems of the Past and the Present. He seems to
have taken no notice of the reception accorded to the
book by the press, though it might have flattered him to
find that some characteristic ideas in this volume which
he never tried to make consistent such as in the^ pieces
entitled "The Sleep-worker", "The Lacking Sense",
"Doom and She", and others ideas that were further
elaborated in The Dynasts, found their way into many
prose writings after this date.

On the last day of the year he makes the following
reflection : "After reading various philosophic systems,
and being struck with their contradictions and futilities,
I have come to this : Let every man make a philosophy for
himself out of his own experience. He will not be able to
escape using terms and phraseology from earlier phi-
losophers, but let him avoid adopting their theories if he
values his own mental life. Let him remember the fate of
Coleridge, and save years of labour by working out his
own views as given him by his surroundings."

"January i (1902). A Pessimist's apology. Pessi-
mism (or rather what is called such) is, in brief, playing
the sure game. You cannot lose at it ; you may gain. It is
the only view of life in which you can never be disap-
pointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst pos-
sible circumstances, when better arise, as they may,
life becomes child's play/'

In reply this month to a writer in the Parisian Revue

92 VERSE 1901-03

Bleue he gave it as his opinion that the effect of the South
African War on English literature had been :

"A vast multiplication of books on the war itself, and
the issue of large quantities of warlike and patriotic
poetry. These works naturally throw into the shade
works that breathe a more quiet and philosophic spirit ;
a curious minor feature in the case among a certain class
of writers being the disguise under Christian terminology
of principles not necessarily wrong from the point of view
of international politics, but obviously anti-Christian,
because inexorable and masterful/'

In view of the approaching centenary of Victor Hugo's
birth, Hardy, amongst other European men of letters,
was asked at this time by a Continental paper for a brief
tribute to the genius of the poet ; and he sent the following :

"His memory must endure. His works are the cathe-
drals of literary architecture, his imagination adding
greatness to the colossal and charm to the small/*

"March. Poetry. There is a latent music in the sin-
cere utterance of deep emotion, however expressed, which
fills the place of the actual word-music in rhythmic
phraseology on thinner emotive subjects, or on subjects
with next to none at all. And supposing a total poetic
effect to be represented by a unit, its component fractions
may be either, say :

"Emotion three-quarters, plus Expression one quar-
ter, or

" Emotion one quarter, plus Expression three-quarters.

"This suggested conception seems to me to be the
only one which explains all cases, including those in-
stances of verse that apparently infringe all rules, and yet
bring unreasoned convictions that they are poetry."

In April of this year he was writing "A Trampwoman's
Tragedy" a ballad based on some local story of an event

AET. 60-63 " POEMS PAST AND PRESENT " 93

more or less resembling the incidents embodied, which
took place between 1820 and 1830. Hardy considered
this, upon the whole, his most successful poem.

To Mr. (afterwards Sir) Rider Haggard, who was in-
vestigating the conditions of agriculture and agricultural
labourers, he gave the following information :

"March 1902.
"My DEAR HAGGARD,

"As to your first question, my

opinion on the past of the agricultural labourers in this
county : I think, indeed know, that down to 1850 or 1855
their condition was in general one of great hardship. I say
in general, for there have always been fancy-farms, re-
sembling St. Clair's in Uncle Tom's Cabin, whereon they
lived as smiling exceptions to those of their class all
around them. I recall one such, the estate-owner being
his own farmer, and ultimately ruining himself by his
hobby. To go to the other extreme : as a child I knew a
sheep-keeping boy who to my horror shortly afterwards
died of want the contents of his stomach at the autopsy
being raw turnip only. His father's wages were six shil-
lings a week, with about two pounds at harvest, a cottage
rent free, and an allowance of thorn faggots from the
hedges as fuel. Between these examples came the great
bulk of farms wages whereon ranged from seven to nine
shillings a week, and perquisites being better in proportion.
"Secondly: as to the present. Things are of course
widely different now. I am told that at the annual hiring-
fair just past, the old positions were absolutely reversed,
the farmers walking about and importuning the la-
bourers to come and be hired, instead of, as formerly,
the labourers anxiously entreating the stolid farmers to
take them on at any pittance. Their present life is almost
without exception one of comfort, if the most ordinary
thrift be observed. I could take you to the cottage of a
shepherd not many miles from here that has a carpet and

94 VERSE 1901-03

brass-rods to the staircase, and from the open door of which
you hear a piano strumming within. Of course bicycles
stand by the doorway., while at night a large paraffin lamp
throws out a perfect blaze of light upon the passer-by.

"The son of another labourer I know takes dancing
lessons at a quadrille-class in the neighbouring town.
Well, why not ?

"But changes at which we must all rejoice have
brought other changes which are not so attractive. The
labourers have become more and more migratory the
younger families in especial, who enjoy nothing so much
as fresh scenery and new acquaintance. The conse-
quences are curious and unexpected. For one thing, vil-
lage tradition a vast mass of unwritten folk-lore, local
chronicle, local topography, and nomenclature is abso-
lutely sinking, has nearly sunk, into eternal oblivion. I
cannot recall a single instance of a labourer who still lives
on the farm where he was born, and I can only recall a few
who have been five years on their present farms. Thus
you see, there being no continuity of environment in their
lives, there is no continuity of information, the names,
stories, and relics of one place being speedily forgotten
under the incoming facts of the next. For example, if
you ask one of the workfolk (they always used to be called
' workfolk' hereabout 'labourers' is an imported word)
the names of surrounding hills, streams ; the character
and circumstances of people buried in particular graves ;
at what spots parish personages lie interred ; questions on
local fairies, ghosts, herbs, etc., they can give no answer :
yet I can recollect the time when the places of burial even
of the poor and tonibless were all remembered, and the
history of the parish and squire's family for 150 years
back known. Such and such ballads appertained to such
and such a locality, ghost tales were attached to particu-
lar sites, and nooks wherein wild herbs grew for the cure
of divers maladies were pointed out readily.

AET.6o-6 3 "POEMS PAST AND PRESENT" 95

"On the subject of the migration to the towns I think I
have printed my opinions from time to time : so that I will
only say a word or two about it here. In this considera-
tion the case of the farm-labourers merges itself in that of
rural cottagers generally, including jobbing labourers,
artizans, and nondescripts of all sorts who go to make up
the body of English villagery. That these people have re-
moved to the towns of sheer choice during the last forty
years it would be absurd to argue, except as to that per-
centage of young, adventurous, and ambitious spirits
among them which is found in all societies. The prime
cause of the removal is, unquestionably, insecurity of
tenure. If they do not escape this in the towns it is not
fraught with such trying consequences there as in a vil-
lage, whence they may have to travel ten or twenty miles
to find another house and other work. Moreover, if in a
town lodging an honest man's daughter should have an
illegitimate child, or his wife should take to drinking, he
is not compelled by any squire to pack up his furniture
and get his living elsewhere, as is, or was lately, too often
the case in the country. (I am neither attacking nor de-
fending this order of things ; I merely relate it : the land-
lord sometimes had reason on his side; sometimes not).

"Now why such migrations to cities did not largely
take place till within the last forty years or so is, I think
(in respect of farm labourers), that they had neither the
means nor the knowledge in old times that they have now.
And owing to the then stability of villagers of the other
class such as mechanics and small traders, the backbone
of village life they had not the inclination. The tenure
of these latter was, down to about fifty years ago, a fairly
secure one, even if they were not in the possession of small
freeholds. The custom of granting leaseholds for three
lives, or other life-holding privileges, obtained largely in
our villages, and though tenures by lifehold may not be
ideally good or fair, they did at least serve the purpose of

9 6 VERSE 1901-03

keeping the native population at home. Villages in which
there is not now a single cottager other than a weekly
tenant were formerly occupied almost entirely on the life-
hold principle, the term extending over seventy or a hun-
dred years; and the young man who knows that he is
secure of his father's and grandfather's cottage for his
own lifetime thinks twice and three times before he em-
barks on the uncertainties of a wandering career. Now
though,, as I have said, these cottagers were not often
farm labourers, their permanency reacted on the farm
labourers, and made their lives with such comfortable
associates better worth living.

"Thirdly : as to the future, the evils of instability, and
the ultimate results from such a state of things, it hardly
becomes me to attempt to prophesy here. That remedies
exist for them and are easily applicable you will easily
gather from what I have stated above."

"April 20. Vagg Hollow, on the way to Load Bridge
(Somerset) is a place where * things ' used to be seen
usually taking the form of a wool-pack in the middle of
the road. Teams and other horses always stopped on the
brow of the hollow, and could only be made to go on by
whipping. A waggoner once cut at the pack with his
whip : it opened in two, and smoke and a hoofed figure
rose out of it."

"May i. Life is what we make it as Whist is what we
make it ; but not as Chess is what we make it ; which
ranks higher as a purely intellectual game than either
Whist or Life."

Letter sent to and printed in The Academy and Liter a-
ture. May 17, 1902, concerning a review of Maeterlinck's
Apology for Nature ;

AET,6o~6 3 "POEMS PAST AND PRESENT" 97

"SiR,

"In your review of M. Maeterlinck's book you
quote with seeming approval his vindication of Nature's
ways, which is (as I understand it) to the effect that,
though she does not appear to be just from our point of
view, she may practise a scheme of morality unknown to
us, in which she is just. Now, admit but the bare possi-
bility of such a hidden morality, and she would go out of
court without the slightest stain on her character, so
certain should we feel that indifference to morality was
beneath her greatness.

"Far be it from my wish to distrust any comforting
fantasy, if it can be barely tenable. But alas, no pro-
found reflection can be needed to detect the sophistry in
M. Maeterlinck's argument, and to see that the original
difficulty recognized by thinkers like Schopenhauer,
Hartmann, Haeckel, etc., and by most of the persons
called pessimists, remains unsurmounted.

"Pain has been, and pain is : no new sort of morals in
Nature can remove pain from the past and make it pleasure
for those who are its infallible estimators, the bearers
thereof. And no injustice, however slight, can be atoned
for by her future generosity, however ample, so long as we
consider Nature to be, or to stand for, unlimited power.
The exoneration of an omnipotent Mother by her retro-
spective justice becomes an absurdity when we ask, what
made the foregone injustice necessary to her Omnipotence ?

" So you cannot, I fear, save her good name except by
assuming one of two things : that she is blind and not a
judge of her actions, or that she is an automaton, and
unable to control them : in either of which assumptions^
though you have the chivalrous satisfaction of screening
one of her sex, you only throw responsibility a stage
further back.

"But the story is not new. It is true, nevertheless^
that, as M, Maeterlinck contends, to dwell too long amid

98 VERSE 1901-03

such reflections does no good* and that to model our con-
duct on Nature's apparent conduct, as Nietzsche would
have taught, caa only bring disaster to humanity.
"Yours truly,

"THOMAS HARDY.

"MAX GATE, DORCHESTER."

In June Hardy was engaged in a correspondence in the
pages of the Dorset County Chronicle on Edmund Kean's
connection with Dorchester, which town he visited as a
player before he became famous, putting up with his wife
and child at an inn called "The Little Jockey" on Glyde-
Path Hill (standing in Hardy's time). His child died
whilst here, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard near
at hand. The entry in the Register runs as follows :

"Burials in the Parish of Holy Trinity in Dorchester
in the County of Dorset in the year 1813 :

"Name, Howard, son of Edmund and Mary Kean.
Abode, Residing at Glyde Path Hill in this Parish.
When buried, Nov. 24. Age 4. By whom the Ceremony
was performed, Henry John Richman."

Readers of the life of Kean will remember the heavi-
ness of heart with which he noted his experience at Dor-
chester on this occasion that it was a very wet night,
that there was a small audience, that, unless we are mis-
taken, the play was Coriolanus (fancy playing Coriolanus
at Dorchester now!), that he performed his part badly.
Yet he was standing on the very brink of fame, for it was
on this very occasion that the emissary from Old Drury
Arnold, the stage manager witnessed his performance,
and decided that he was the man for the London boards,

In his letters to the paper under the pseudonym of
"History*' Hardy observed :

"Your correspondent "Dorset- who proposes to 'turn
the hose' upon the natural interest of Dorchester people
in Edmund Kean, should, I think, first turn the hose upon

AET.6o~6 3 "POEMS PAST AND PRESENT" 99

his own uncharitableness. His contention amounts to
this, that because one of the greatest, if not the very great-
est, of English tragedians was not without blemish in his
morals, no admiration is to be felt for his histrionic achieve-
ments or regard for the details of his life. So, then, Lord
Nelson should have no place in our sentiment, nor Burns,
nor Byron not even Shakespeare himself nor unhappily
many another great man whose flesh has been weak.
With amusing maladroitness your correspondent calls
himself by the name of the county which has lately com-
memorated King Charles the Second a worthy who
seduced scores of men's wives to Kean's one.

"Kean was, in truth, a sorely tried man, and it is no
wonder that he may have succumbed. The illegitimate
child of a struggling actress, the vicissitudes and hard-
ships of his youth and young manhood left him without
moral ballast when the fire of his genius brought him
success and adulation. The usual result followed, and
owing to the publicity of his life it has been his mis-
fortune ever since to have, like Cassius in Julius C<zsar y

All his faults observed,
Set in a note-book, learn'd and conn'd by rote,

by people who show the Christian feeling of your corre-
spondent/'

The following week Hardy sent a supplementary note :
"One word as to the building [in Dorchester] in which
Kean performed in 1813. There is little doubt that it was
in the old theatre yet existing [though not as such], stage
and all, at the back of Messrs. Godwin's china shop ; and
for these among other reasons. A new theatre in North
Square [Qy. Back West Street?], built by Curme, was
opened in February 1828, while there are still dwellers in
Dorchester who have heard persons speak of seeing plays
in the older theatre about 1821 or 1822, Kean's visit
having been only a few years earlier/ 2

ioo VERSE 1901-03

During the latter half of this year 1902 Hardy was
working more or less on the first part of The Dynasts,
which, was interrupted in August and September by bicy-
cle trips, and in October by a short stay in Bath, where
the cycling was continued. On one of these occasions
having reached Bristol by road, and suddenly entered on
the watered streets, he came off in to the mud with a side-
slip, and was rubbed down by a kindly coal-heaver with
one of his sacks. In this condition he caught sight of
some rare old volume in a lumber-shop ; and looking him
up and down when he asked the price, the woman who
kept the shop said: "Well, sixpence won't hurt ye, I
suppose?" He used to state that if he had proposed
threepence he would doubtless have got the volume.

To a correspondent who was preparing a Report on
Capital Punishment for the Department of Economics,
Stanford University, California, and who asked for the
expression of his opinion on the advisability of abolishing
it in highly civilized communities, he replied about this
time:

"As an acting magistrate I think that Capital Punish-
ment operates as a deterrent from deliberate crimes
against life to an extent that no other form of punishment
can rival. But the question of the moral right of a com-
munity to inflict that punishment is one I cannot enter
into in this necessarily brief communication."

It may be observed that the writer describes himself
as an "acting magistrate", yet he acted but little at ses-
sions. He was not infrequently, however, on Grand Juries
at the Assizes, where he would meet with capital offences.

Returning to the country in July he sat down to finish
the first part of The Dynasts , the MS. of which was sent
to the Messrs. Macmillan at the end of September. He
then corrected the proofs of "A Trampwornan's Tragedy"
for the North American Review > in which pages it was pub-

AET. 60-63 "POEMS PAST AND PRESENT" 101

lished in November. When the ballad was read in England
by the few good judges who met with it, they reproached
Hardy with sending it out of the country for publication,
not knowing that it was first offered to the Cornhill
Magazine, and declined by the editor on the ground of it
not being a poem he could possibly print in a family
periodical. That there was any impropriety in the verses
had never struck the author at all, nor did it strike any
readers, so far as he was aware.

In December he answered an inquiry addressed to him
by the editor of L'Europeen, an international journal
published in Paris :

"I would say that I am not of opinion that France is
in a decadent state. Her history seems to take the form
of a serrated line, thus :

and a true judgement of her general tendency cannot be
based on a momentary observation, but must extend
over whole periods of variation.

"What will sustain France as a nation is, I think, her
unique accessibility to new ideas, and her ready power of
emancipation from those which reveal themselves to be

In the same month of December the first part of The
Dynasts was published.

It was some time in this year that Hardy, in concur-
rence with his brother and sisters, erected in Stinsford
Church a brass tablet to commemorate the connection of
his father, grandfather, and uncle with the musical serv-
ices there in the early part of the previous century the
west gallery, wherein their ministrations had covered
altogether about forty years, having been removed some

ioa VERSE 1901-03

sixty years before this date. The inscription on the brass
runs as follows :

Memoriae Sacrum Thomae Hardy* patris Jacob! et Thomae
filiorum qui olim in * hac Ecclesia per annos quadraginta
(MDCCCII MDCCCXLI) fidicinis munere sunt perfuncti.
Ponendum curaverunt Thomae junioris - filii - et filiae : Thomas :
Henrietta : Maria : Catherina. MDCCCCIII.

In drawing up this inscription Hardy was guided by
his belief that the English language was liable to undergo
great alterations in the future^ whereas Latin would re-
main unchanged.

CHAPTER VIII
PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS"

1904-1905 : Aet. 63-65

As The Dynasts contained ideas of some freshness, and was
not a copy of something else, a large number of critics were
too puzzled by it to be unprejudiced. The appraisement of
the work was in truth, while nominally literary, at the core
narrowly Philistine, and even theosophic. Its author had
erroneously supposed that by writing a frank preface on
his method that the scheme of the drama was based on a
tentative theory of things which seemed to accord with
the mind of the age ; but that whether such theory did or
not so accord, and whether it were true or false, little
affected his object, which was a poetical one wherein
nothing more was necessary than that the theory should
be plausible a polemic handling of his book would be
avoided. Briefly, that the drama being advanced not as
a reasoned system of philosophy, nor as a new philosophy,
but as a poem, with the discrepancies that are to be ex-
pected in an imaginative work, as such it would be read.

However, the latitude claimed was allowed but in few
instances, and an unfavourable reception was pretty gen-
eral, the substance of which was "On what ground do you
arrogate to yourself a right to express in poetry a phi-
losophy which has never been expressed in poetry before ?"

Notwithstanding his hopes, he had a suspicion that
such might be the case, as we may gather from a note he
had written :

103

104 VERSE 1904-05

"The old theologies may or may not have worked for
good In their time. But they will not bear stretching
further in epic or dramatic art. The Greeks used up
theirs : the Jews used up theirs : the Christians have used
up theirs. So that one must make an independent
plunge, embodying the real, if only temporary, thought
of the age. But I expect that I shall catch it hot and
strong for attempting it !"

Hardy replied to one of these criticisms written by the
dramatic critic of The Times in the Literary Supplement
{Times Literary Supplement^ Feb. 5 and Feb. 19, 1904),
but did not make many private memoranda on the
reviews. One memorandum is as follows :

"I suppose I have handicapped myself by expressing,
both in this drama and previous verse, philosophies and
feelings as yet not well established or formally adopted
into the general teaching ; and by thus over-stepping the
standard boundary set up for the thought of the age by
the proctors of opinion, I have thrown back my chance of
acceptance in poetry by many years. The very fact of
my having tried to spread over art the latest illumination
of the time has darkened counsel in respect of me.

"What the reviewers really assert is, not 'This is an
untrue and inartistic view of life', but "This is not the
view of life that we people who thrive on conventions can
permit to be painted'. If, instead of the machinery I
adopted, I had constructed a theory of a world directed
by fairies, nobody would have objected, and the critics
would probably have said, "What a charming fancy of
Mr. Hardy's ! - But having chosen a scheme which may
or may not be a valid one, but is presumably much
nearer reality than the fancy of a world ordered by fairies
would be, they straightway lift their brows."

Writing to his friend Edward Clodd on March 22, he
says:

"I did not quite think that the Dynasts would suit

;AET. 63-65 PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS" 105

your scientific mind, or shall I say the scientific side of
your mind, so that I am much pleased to hear that you
have got pleasure out of it.

" As to my having said nothing or little (I think I did
just allude to it a long while ago) about having it in hand,
the explanation is simple enough I did not mean to pub-
lish Part I. by itself until after a quite a few days before
I sent it up to the publishers : and to be engaged in a de-
sultory way on a MS. which may be finished in five years
(the date at which I thought I might print it, complete)
does not lead one to say much about it. On my return
here from London I had a sudden feeling that I should
never carry the thing any further, so off it went. But
now I am better inclined to go on with it. Though I
rather wish I had kept back the parts till the whole could
be launched, as I at first intended.

" What you say about the ' Will* is true enough, if you
take the word in its ordinary sense. But in the lack
of another word to express precisely what is meant, a
secondary sense has gradually arisen, that of effort exer-
cised in a reflex or unconscious manner. Another word
would have been better if one could have had it, though
/Power' would not do, as power can be suspended or with-
held, and the forces of Nature cannot : However, there are
inconsistences in the Phantoms, no doubt. But that was
a point to which I was somewhat indifferent, since they
are not supposed to be more than the best human intelli-
gences of their time in a sort of quint-essential form. I
speak of the c Years'. The ' Pi ties' are, of course, merely
Humanity, with all its weaknesses.

"You speak of Meredith. I am sorry to learn that he
has been so seriously ill. Leslie Stephen gone too. They
are thinning out ahead of us. I have just lost an old friend
down here, of forty-seven years' standing. A man whose
opinions differed almost entirely from my own on most
subjects, and yet he was a good and sincere friend the

106 VERSE 1905-06

brother of the present Bishop of Durham^ and like him
in old-fashioned views of the Evangelical school/'

His mind was, however, drawn away from the perils
of attempting to express his age in poetry by a noticeable
change in his mother's state of health. She was now in her
ninety-first year, and though she had long suffered from
deafness was mentally as clear and alert as ever. She sank
gradually, but it was not till two days before her death that
she failed to comprehend his words to her. She died on
Easter Sunday, April 3, and was buried at Stinsford in the
grave of her husband. She had been a woman with an
extraordinary store of local memories, reaching back to
the days when the ancient ballads were everywhere heard
at country feasts, in weaving shops, and at spinning-
wheels ; and her good taste in literature was expressed by
the books she selected for her children in circumstances
in which opportunities for selection were not numerous.
The portraits of her which appeared in The Sphere, The
Gentlewoman, The Book Monthly , and other papers the
best being from a painting by her daughter Mary show
a face of dignity and judgement.

A month earlier he had sent a reply to the Rev. S.
Whittel Key, who had inquired of him concerning " sport " :

"I am not sufficiently acquainted with the many
varieties of sport to pronounce which is, quantitatively,
the most cruel. I can only say generally that the prevalence
of those sports which consist in the pleasure of watching
a fellow-creature, weaker or less favoured than ourselves,
in its struggles, by Nature's poor resources only, to escape
the death-agony we mean to inflict by the treacherous
contrivances of science, seems one of the many convincing
proofs that we have not yet emerged from barbarism.

"In the present state of affairs there would appear to
be no logical reason why the smaller children, say, of
overcrowded families, should not be used for sporting
purposes. Darwin has revealed that there would be no

AET.6 3 -6 5 PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS" 107

difference in principle ; moreover, these children would
often escape lives intrinsically less happy than those of
wild birds and other animals."

During May he was in London reading at the British
Museum on various days probably historic details that
bore upon The Dynasts and went to Sunday concerts
at the Queen's Hall, and to afternoon services at St.
Paul's whenever he happened to be near the Cathedral, a
custom of his covering many years before and after.

On June 28 The Times published the following letter :

"SiR,

"I should like to be allowed space to express in the
fewest words a view of Count Tolstoy's philosophic ser-
mon on war, of which you print a translation in your
impression of to-day and a comment in your leading
article.

"The sermon may show many of the extravagances of
detail to which the world has grown accustomed in Count
Tolstoy's later writings. It may exhibit, here and there,
incoherence as a moral system. Many people may
object to the second half of the dissertation its special
application to Russia in the present war (on which I can
say nothing). Others may be unable to see advantage
in the writer's use of theological terms for describing
and illustrating the moral evolutions of past ages. But
surely all these objectors should be hushed by his great
argument, and every defect in his particular reasonings
hidden by the blaze of glory that shines from his masterly
general indictment of war as a modern principle, with all
its senseless and illogical crimes.

"Your obedient servant,

"THOMAS HARDY/*

Again in the country in August, Hardy resumed his
cycling tours, meeting by accident Mr. William Watson,
Mr. Francis Coutts (Lord Latymer), and Mr. John Lane

io8 VERSE 1904-05

at Glastonbury, and spending a romantic day or two
there among the ruins.

In October Hardy learnt by letter from Madras of the
death of Mrs, Malcolm Nicolson the gifted and impas-
sioned poetess known as "Laurence Hope", whom he had
met in London ; and he wrote a brief obituary notice of
her in the Athenceum at the end of the month. But
beyond this, and the aforesaid newspaper letters, he
appears to have printed very little during this year 1904.
A German translation of Life's Little Ironies was pub-
lished in A us fremden Zungen, in Berlin, and a French
translation of The Well-Beloved undertaken.

His memoranda get more and more meagre as the
years go on, until we are almost entirely dependent on
letter-references, reviews, and casual remarks of his taken
down by the present writer. It is a curious reversal of
what is usually found in lives, where notes and diaries
grow more elaborate with maturity of years. But it
accords with Hardy's frequent saying that he took little
interest in himself as a person, and his absolute refusal at
all times to write his reminiscences.

In January (1905) he served as Grand Juror at the
winter Assizes, and in the latter part of the month met
Dr. Shipley, Mr. Asquith, Lord Monteagle, Sir Edgar
Vincent, and others at a dinner at the National Club
given by Mr. Gosse. At this time he was much inter-
ested in the paintings of Zurbaran, which he preferred to
all others of the old Spanish school, venturing to think
that they might some day be held in higher estimation
than those of Velasquez.

About this time the romantic poem entitled " A Noble
Lady's Tale" was printed in the Cornhill Magazine.

The first week in April Hardy left Dorchester for
London en route for Aberdeen, the ancient University of
which city had offered him the honorary degree of LL.D.
In accepting it he remarked :

AET.6 3 -6 5 PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS" 109

"I am impressed by its coming from Aberdeen, for
though a stranger to that part of Scotland to a culpable
extent I have always observed with admiration the excep-
tional characteristics of the northern University, which in
its fostering encouragement of mental effort seems to cast
an eye over these islands that is unprejudiced, unbiassed,
and unsleeping."

It was a distance of near 700 miles by the route he
would have to take almost as far as to the Pyrenees
and over the northern stage of it winter still lingered ; but
his journey there and back was an easy one. The section
from Euston Square to the north was performed in a
train of sleeping-cars which crunched through the snow
as if it were January, the occasion coinciding with the
opening of the new sculpture gallery, a function that
brought many visitors from London. Hardy was hospit-
ably entertained at the Chanonry Lodge, Old Aberdeen^
by Principal and Mrs. Marshall Lang, which was the
beginning of a friendship that lasted till the death of the
Principal. Among others who received the like honour
at the same time were Professor Bury and Lord Reay.

In the evening there was a reception in the Mitchell
Hall, Marischal College, made lively by Scotch reels and
bag-pipers ; and the next day, after attending at the
formal opening of the sculpture gallery, he was a guest at
the Corporation Dinner at the Town Hall, where friends
were warm, but draughts were keen to one from a
southern county, and speeches, though good, so long that
he and the Principal did not get back to Chanonry Lodge
till one o'clock.

On Sunday morning Hardy visited spots in and about
Aberdeen associated with Byron and others, and lunched
at the Grand Hotel by the invitation of Mr. (afterwards
Sir) James Murray, dining at the same place with the same
host, crossing hands in Auld Lang Syne with delightful
people whom he had never seen before and, alas, never

no VERSE 1904-05

saw again. This was the "hearty way" (as it would be
called in Wessex) in which they did things in the snowy
north. To Hardy the whole episode of Aberdeen, he
said, was of a most pleasant and unexpected kind, and it
remained with him like a romantic dream.

Passing through London on his way south he break-
fasted at the Athenaeum, where he was shocked to learn
of the death of his friend, Lord St. Helier (Sir Francis
Jeune), who had been ailing more or less since the loss of
his only son in the previous August. Hardy on his way
down to Dorset was led to think of the humorous stories
connected with the Divorce Court that the genial judge
sometimes had told him when they were walking in the
woods of Arlington Manor in the summer holidays ; among
them the tale of that worthy couple who wished to be di-
vorced but disliked the idea of such an unpleasant person
as a co-respondent being concerned in it, and so hit upon
the plan of doing without him. The husband, saying he
was going to Liverpool for a day or two, got a private
detective to watch his house ; but instead of leaving stayed
in London, and at the dead of night went to his own house
in disguise, and gave a signal. His wife came down in her
dressing-gown and let him in softly, letting him out again
before it was light. When the husband inquired of the
detective he was informed that there was ample evidence ;
and the divorce was duly obtained.

Hardy could not remember whether it was a story of
the same couple or of another, in which Sir Francis had
related that being divorced they grew very fond of each
other, the former wife becoming the husband's mistress,
and living happily with him ever after.

As they had taken a flat at Hyde Park Mansions for
this spring and summer Hardy did not stay long in
Dorset, and they entered the flat the week before Easter.
During April he followed up Tchaikowsky at the Queen's

AET. 63-65 PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS" in

Hall concerts, saying of the impetuous march-piece in the
third movement of the Pathetic Symphony that it was
the only music he knew that was able to make him feel
exactly as if he were in a battle.

"May 5, To the Lord Mayor's farewell banquet to
Mr. Choate at the Mansion House. Thought of the con-
tinuity of the institution, and the teeming history of the
spot. A graceful speech by Arthur Balfour : a less graceful
but more humorous one by Mr. Choate. Spoke to many
whom I knew. Sat between Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity,
and Sir J. Ramsay. Came home with Sir F. Pollock."

This month he was seeing Ben Jonson's play, The
Silent Woman^ and Shaw's John Bull's Other Island and
Man and Superman, and went to the Royal Society's Con-
versazione ; though for some days confined to the house
by a sore throat and cough. At a lunch given by Sidney
Lee at the Garrick Club in June he talked about Shake-
speare with Sir Henry Irving, and was reconfirmed in his
opinion that actors never see a play as a whole and in true
perspective, but in a false perspective from the shifting
point of their own part in it, Sir Henry having shied at
Hardy's suggestion that he should take the part of Jaques.

In this June, too, he paid a promised visit to Swin-
burne, and had a long talk with him ; also with Mr. Watts-
Dun ton. "Swinburne's grey eyes are extraordinarily
bright still the brightness of stars that do not twinkle
planets namely. In spite of the nervous twitching of
his feet he looked remarkably boyish and well, and rather
impish. He told me he could walk twenty miles a day,
and was only an old man in his hearing, his sight being as
good as ever. He spoke with amusement of a paragraph
he had seen in a Scottish paper : "Swinburne planteth,
Hardy watereth, and Satan giveth the increase.' He
has had no honours offered him. Said that when he was
nearly drowned his thought was, c My Bothwellwill never
be finished ! l That the secret reason for Lady Byron's dis-

ii2 VERSE 1904-05

missal of Lord Byron was undoubtedly his liaison with
Augusta. His (Swinburne's) mother [Lady Jane, nee
Ashburnham] used to say that it was the talk of London
at the time. That the last time he visited his friend Landor
the latter said plaintively that as he wrote only in a dead
language (Latin), and a dying language (English), he
would soon be forgotten. Talking of poets, he said that
once Mrs. Procter told him that Leigh Hunt on a visit to
her father one day brought an unknown youth in his train
and introduced him casually as Mr. John Keats. (I
think, by the way, that she also told me of the incident. 1 )
We laughed and condoled with each other on having been
the two most abused of living writers ; he for Poems and
Ballad s y I for Jude the Obscure"

Later on in June he went to Mr. Walter Tyndale's
exhibition of Wessex pictures, some of which Hardy had
suggested, and during the remainder of their stay in
London they did little more than entertain a few friends
at Hyde Park Mansions, and dine and lunch with others.

'''June 26, 1905. To the Hon. Sec. of the Shakespeare
Memorial Committee:

"I fear that I shall have to leave town before the
meeting of the Committee takes place.

"All I would say on the form of the Memorial is that
one which embodies the calling of an important street or
square after Shakespeare would seem to be as effectual a
means as any of keeping his name on the tongues of
citizens, and his personality in their minds."

In July they went back to Dorset. Here, in the same
month, a Nelson-and-Hardy exhibition was opened in
Dorchester, the relics shown being mainly those of the
Captain of the Victory ', who had been born and lived near,
and belonged to a branch of the Dorset Hardys, of whom
the subject of this memoir belonged to another.

On September i Hardy received a visit from 200
i See The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 177-

AET. 63-65 PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS" 113

members of the Institute of Journalists at their own sug-
gestion, as they had arranged a driving tour through his
part of the country. There was an understanding that no
interviews should be printed, and to this they honourably
adhered. Their idea had been a call on him only, but they
were entertained at tea, for which purpose a tent 150 feet
long had to be erected on Max Gate lawn. "The interior
with the sun shining through formed a pretty scene when
they were sitting down at the little tables ", Mrs. Hardy
remarks in a diary. "They all drove off in four-in-hand
brakes and other vehicles to Bockhampton, Puddletown,
Bere Regis, and Wool/' After they had gone it came on
to rain, and Hardy, returning from Dorchester at ten
o'clock, met the vehicles coming back in a procession,
empty; "the horses tired and steaming after their jour-
ney of thirty miles, and their coats and harness shining
with rain and perspiration in the light of the lamps ".

In pursuance of the above allusion to interviewing, it
may be stated that there are interviewers and interviewers*
It once happened that an interviewer came specially from
London to Hardy to get his opinions for a popular morning
paper. Hardy said positively that he would not be inter-
viewed on any subject. " Very well ", said the interviewer,
"then back I go, my day and my expenses all wasted."
Hardy felt sorry, his visitor seeming to be a gentlemanly
and educated man, and said he did not see why he should
hurry off, if he would give his word not to write anything.
This was promised, and the interviewer stayed, and had
lunch, and a pleasant couple of hours' conversation on all
sorts of subjects that would have suited him admirably.
Yet he honourably kept his promise, and not a word of
his visit appeared anywhere in the pages of the paper.

In the middle of this month the I5oth anniversary of
the birth of the poet Crabbe at Aldeburgh in Suffolk was
celebrated in that town, and Hardy accepted the invitation
of Mr. Edward Clodd to be present. There were some

H4 VERSE 1904-05

very good tableaux vivants of scenes from the poems ex-
hibited in the Jubilee Hall, some good lectures on the poet,
and a sermon also in the parish church on his life and
work, all of which Hardy attended, honouring Crabbe as
an apostle of realism who practised it in English liter-
ature three-quarters of a century before the French
realistic school had been heard of.

Returning to Max Gate he finished the second part of
The Dynasts that second part which the New York
Tribune and other papers had been positive would never
be heard of, so ridiculous was the first and sent off the
MS. to the Messrs. Macmillan in the middle of October.

"First week in November. The order in which the
leaves fall this year is: Chestnuts; Sycamores; Limes;
Hornbeams ; Elm ; Birch ; Beech."

A letter written November 5 of this year :

"All I know about my family history is that it is in-
dubitably one of the several branches of the Dorset
Hardys having been hereabouts for centuries. But
when or how it was connected with the branch to which
Nelson's Hardy's people belonged who have also been
hereabouts for centuries I cannot positively say. 1 The
branches are always asserted locally to be connected, and
no doubt are, and there is a strong family likeness. I have
never investigated the matter, though my great-uncle
knew the ramifications. The Admiral left no descendant
in the male line, as you may know.

"As to your interesting remarks on honours for men
of letters, I have always thought that any writer who has
expressed unpalatable or possibly subversive views on
society, religious dogma, current morals, and any other
features of the existing order of things, and who wishes to
be free and to express more if they occur to him, must feel

1 Since writing the above I have received from a correspondent what
seems to me indubitable proof of the connection of these two branches
of the Hardy family. F. E. H.

AET.6 3 ~6 5 PART FIRST OF "THE DYNASTS" 115

hampered by accepting honours from any government
which are different from academic honours offered for
past attainments merely. "

To Mr. Israel Zangwill on November 10 :

"It would be altogether presumptuous in me so en-
tirely outside Jewish life to express any positive opinion
on the scheme embodied in the pamphlet you send to me.
I can only say a word or two of the nature of a fancy. To
found an autonomous Jewish state or colony, under
British suzerainty or not, wears the look of a good prac-
tical idea, and it is possibly all the better for having no
retrospective sentiment about it. But I cannot help
saying that this retrospective sentiment among Jews is
precisely the one I can best enter into.

" So that if I were a Jew I should be a rabid Zionist no
doubt. I feel that the idea of ultimately getting to
Palestine is the particular idea to make the imaginative
among your people enthusiastic 'like unto them that
dream* as one of you said in a lyric which is among the
finest in any tongue, to judge from its power in a trans-
lation. You, I suppose, read it in the original ; I wish I
could. (This is a digression.)

"The only plan that seems to me to reconcile the tradi-
tional feeling with the practical is that of regarding the
proposed Jewish state on virgin soil as a stepping-stone to
Palestine. A Jewish colony united and strong and grown
wealthy in, say, East Africa, could make a bid for Palestine
(as a sort of annexe) say 100 years hence with far
greater effect than the race as scattered all over the globe
can ever do ; and who knows if by that time altruism may
not have made such progress that the then ruler or rulers
of Palestine, whoever they may be, may even hand it over
to the expectant race, and gladly assist them, or part of
them, to establish themselves there.

"This expectation, nursed throughout the formation

n6 VERSE 1904-05

and development of the new territory, would at any rate
be serviceable as an ultimate ideal to stimulate action.
With such an idea lying behind the immediate one, per-
haps the Zionists would reunite and co-operate with the
New Territorialists.

"I have written, as I said, only a fancy. But, as I think
you know, nobody outside Jewry can take a deeper interest
than I do in a people of such extraordinary character and
history ; who brought forth, moreover, a young reformer
who, though only in the humblest walk of life, became
the most famous personage the world has ever known/'

At the end of 1905 a letter reached him from a corre-
spondent in the Philippine Islands telling him that to its
writer he was "like some terrible old prophet crying in
the wilderness .

CHAPTER IX

THE REMAINDER OF "THE DYNASTS"

1906-1908 : Aet. 65-67

THE Dynasts y Part II., was not published till the first
week in February 1906, and its reception by the reviews
was much more congratulatory than their reception of
the first part, an American critical paper going so far as
to say, "Who knows that this work may not turn out to
be a masterpiece ?"

This year they re-occupied the flat in Hyde Park
Mansions that had been let to them by Lady Thomp-
son the year before, and paid the customary visits to
private views, concerts, and plays that are usually paid
to such by people full of vigour from the country. Of the
Wagner concerts he says :

" I prefer late Wagner, as I prefer late Turner, to early
(which I suppose is all wrong in taste), the idiosyncrasies
of each master being more strongly shown in these strains.
When a man not contented with the grounds of his suc-
cess goes on and on, and tries to achieve the impossible,
then he gets profoundly interesting to me. To-day it was
early Wagner for the most part : fine music, but not so
particularly his no spectacle of the inside of a brain at
work like the inside of a hive/'

An attack of influenza, which he usually got while
sojourning in London, passed off, and they entertained
many friends at the flat as usual, and went out to various

117

ii8 VERSE 1906-08

meetings and dinners, though he does not write them
down in detail as when he thought he must. They
included one at Vernon Lushington's, where Hardy was
interested in the portrait of his host's father, the Lush-
ington of the Lady Byron mystery, who kept his secret
honourably ; also a luncheon in a historic room weighted
with its antiquity, the vaulted dining-room of the house
in Dean's Yard then occupied by Dr. Wilberforce as
Archdeacon of Westminster. It was this year that Hardy
met Dr. Grieg, the composer, and his wife, and when,
discussing Wagner music, he said to Grieg that the wind
and rain through trees, iron railings, and keyholes, fairly
suggested Wagner music; to which the rival composer
responded severely that he himself would sooner have
the wind and rain.

' On the 2 1st May the following letter, in which Hardy
gives a glimpse of himself as a young man in London,
appeared in The Times;

"Sin,

"This being the looth anniversary of J. Stuart Mill's
birth, and as writers like Carlyle, Leslie Stephen, and
others have held that anything, however imperfect,
which affords an idea of a human personage in his actual
form and flesh, is of value in respect of him, the few
following words on how one of the profoundest thinkers
of the last century appeared forty years ago to the man
in the street may be worth recording as a footnote to
Mr. Morley's admirable estimate of Mill's life and philos-
ophy in your impression of Friday.

"Itwasaday in 1865, about three in the afternoon, dur-
ing Mill's candidature for Westminster. The hustings had
been erected in Covent Garden, near the front of St. Paul's
Church ; and when I a young man living in London
drew near to the spot, Mill was speaking. The appear-
ance of the author of the treatise, On Liberty (which we

AET.6 5 -6 7 REMAINDER OF "THE DYNASTS " 119

students of that date knew almost by heart) was so differen t
from the look of persons who usually address crowds in
the open air that it held the attention of people for whom
such a gathering in itself had little interest. Yet it was,
primarily, that of a man out of place. The religious sin-
cerity of his speech was jarred on by his environment a
group on the hustings who, with few exceptions, did not
care to understand him fully, and a crowd below who
could not. He stood bareheaded, and his vast pale brow,
so thin-skinned as to show the blue veins, sloped back like
a stretching upland, and conveyed to the observer a
curious sense of perilous exposure. The picture of him as
personified earnestness surrounded for the most part by
careless curiosity derived an added piquancy if it can be
called such from the fact that the cameo clearness of
his face chanced to be in relief against the blue shadow of
a church which, on its transcendental side, his doctrines
antagonized. But it would not be right to say that the
throng was absolutely unimpressed by his words ; it felt
that they were weighty, though it did not quite know why.
"Your obedient servant,

"THOMAS HARDY.
"HYDE PARK MANSIONS,
"May 20."

The same month Mrs. Hardy makes the following
note : " May 30. Returned to Max Gate for a day or two.
I gardened a little, and had the first strange fainting-fit
[I had known]. My heart seemed to stop ; I fell, and after
a while a servant came to me." (Mrs. Hardy died of
heart-failure six years after.)

During this summer in London M. Jacques Blanche,
the well-known French painter, who had a studio in
Knightsbridge, painted Hardy's portrait in oils. And a
paper called "Memories of Church Restoration", which
he had written, was read in his enforced absence by

120 VERSE 1906-08

Colonel Eustace Balfour at the annual meeting of the
Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

At the end of the lecture great satisfaction was ex-
pressed by speakers that Hardy had laid special em-
phasis on the value of the human associations of ancient
buildings, for instance, the pews of churches, since they
were generally slighted in paying regard to artistic and
architectural points only.

As the June month drew on Hardy seems to have been
at the British Museum Library verifying some remaining
details for The Dynast s y Part Third; also incidentally
going to see the Daily Telegraph printed, and to meet a
group of German editors on a visit to England. He
returned with his wife to Dorset towards the latter part
of July.

At the end of July he wrote to Pittsburgh, U.S.A. :
" The handsome invitation of the Trustees of the Pitts-
burgh Institute that I should attend the dedication with
wife or daughter, free of expense to us from the time we
leave home till we return again, is a highly honouring and
tempting one. But I am compelled to think of many con-
tingent matters that would stand in the way of my paying
such a visit, and have concluded that I cannot undertake it.
"Please convey my thanks to Mr. Carnegie and the

trustees/'

"August 15. Have just read of the death of Mrs.
Craigie in the papers. . . . Her description of the artistic
temperament is clever ; as being that which ' thinks more
than there is to think, feels more than there is to feel, sees
more than there is to see'. ... It reveals a bitterness of
heart that was not shown on the surface by that brilliant

woman."

On August 17 he started with his brother on a tour
to some English cathedrals, which included Lincoln, Ely,

AET.6 5 ~6 7 REMAINDER OF "THE DYNASTS" 121

the Cambridge Colleges, and Canterbury; and finished
out the summer with bicycling in Dorset and Somerset.
He must have been working at the third part of The
'Dynasts at intervals this year, though there is appar-
ently no record of his doing so.

1907

The poem entitled " New Year's Eve ", written in 1906,
was issued in the January number of the Fortnightly Re-
view y 1907 (afterwards reprinted in the volume called
Time's Laughingstocks). Some time in the same month
he made the following notes on kindred subjects :

cc An ephemeral article which might be written : c The
Hard Case of the Would-be-Religious. By Sinceritas/

"Synopsis. Many millions of the most thoughtful
people in England are prevented entering any church or
chapel from year's end to year's end.

"The days of creeds are as dead and done with as the
days of Pterodactyls.

"Required: services at which there are no affirma-
tions and no supplications.

"Rationalists err as far in one direction as Revela-
tionists or Mystics in the other ; as far as in the direction
of logicality as their opponents away from it,

" Religious , religion^ is to be used in the article in its
modern sense entirely, as being expressive of nobler feel-
ings towards humanity and emotional goodness and
greatness, the old meaning of the word ceremony, or
ritual having perished, or nearly.

"We enter church, and we have to say, c We have
erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep', when
what we want to say is, 'Why are we made to err and
stray like lost sheep ?' Then we have to sing, 'My soul
doth magnify the Lord', when what we want to sing is,
*O that my soul could find some Lord that it could
magnify ! Till it can, let us magnify good works, and

122 VERSE 1906-08

develop all means of easing mortals 5 * progress through a
world not worthy of them/-

" Still, being present, we say the established words
full of the historic sentiment only, mentally adding, 'How
happy our ancestors were in repeating in all sincerity these
articles of faith F But we perceive that none of the con-
gregation recognizes that we repeat the words from an
antiquarian interest in them, and in a historic sense, and
solely in order to keep a church of some sort afoot a
thing indispensable; so that we are pretending what is
not true: that we are believers. This must not be; we
must leave. And if we do, we reluctantly go to the door,
and creep out as it creaks complainingly behind us.* 2
Hardy, however, was not a controversialist in religion
or anything else, and it should be added here that he
sometimes took a more nebulous view, that may be called
transmutative, as in a passage that he wrote some time
later :

"Christianity nowadays as expounded by Christian
apologists has an entirely different meaning from that
which it bore when I was a boy. If I understand, it now
limits itself to the religion of emotional morality and altru-
ism that was taught by Jesus Christ, or nearly so limits
itself. But this teaching does not appertain especially
to Christianity : other moral religions within whose sphere
the name of Christ has never been heard, teach the same
thing ! Perhaps this is a mere question of terminology, and
does not much matter. That the dogmatic superstitions
read every Sunday are merely a commemorative recitation
of old articles of faith held by our grandfathers, may not
much matter either, as long as this is well understood.
Still, it would be more honest to make these points clearer,
by recasting the liturgy, for their real meaning is often
misapprehended. But there seems to be no sign of such a
clearing up, and I fear that, since the * Apology* [in Late
Lyric3\ in which I expressed as much some years ago, no

65-67 REMAINDER OF "THE DYNASTS" 123

advance whatever has been shown; rather,, indeed, a
childish back-current towards a belief in magic rites."

"February 8. E. goes to London to walk in the suffra-
gist procession to-morrow."

In March occurred the death of a friend the Rev. T.
Perkins, rector of Turn worth, Dorset with whom Hardy
was in sympathy for his humane and disinterested views,
and staunch support of the principle of justice for animals,
in whose cause he made noble sacrifices, and spent time
and money that he could ill afford. On the agth of the
month Hardy enters a memorandum :

"Eve of Good Friday. 11.30 P.M. Finished draft of
Part III. of The Dynasts" He had probably been so far
influenced by the reception of the first two parts, as not to
expect the change of view which was about to give to the
third part, and the whole production, a warm verdict of
success, or he would not have followed the entry by the
addendum :

"Critics can never be made to understand that the
failure may be greater than the success. It is their partic-
ular duty to point this out ; but the public points it out
to them. To have strength to roll a stone weighing a
hundredweight to the top of the mount is a success, and
to have the strength to roll a stone of ten hundredweight
only half-way up that mount is a failure. But the latter is
two or three times as strong a deed."

They again took the flat in Hyde Park Mansions for
the spring and summer, and moved thither the third week
in April, whence they made their usual descent on friends
andacquaintances,picture-galleries,and concert-rooms. It
was this year that they met Mr. andMrs. Bernard Shaw
it is believed for the first time. They also received at the flat
their customary old friends, including Mr. and Mrs. J. M.
Barrie^M, and Madame Jacques Blanche, andmany others.

124 VERSE 1906-08

In May he was present at an informal but most inter-
esting dinner at the house of his friend. Dr. Hagberg
Wright, where he met ML and Mme. Maxim Gorky,
Mr. H, G. Wells, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Conrad, Mr.
Richard Whiteing, and others. A disconcerting but amus-
ing accident was the difficulty of finding Mr. Wright's flat,
on account of which the guests arrived at intervals and
had their dinners in succession, the Gorkys coming last
after driving two hours about London, including the
purlieus of Whitechapel, which he had mistaken for
"Westminster". Naturally it was a late hour when the
party broke up.

June 2. Hardy's birthday, which he kept by dining at
Lady St. Helier's.

On the same day he wrote to Mr. Edward Wright :

"Your interesting letter on the philosophy of The
Dynasts has reached me here. I will try to answer some of
your inquiries.

"I quite agree with you in holding that the word
'Will* does not perfectly fit the idea to be conveyed a
vague thrusting or urging internal force in no predeter-
mined direction. But it has become accepted in phi-
losophy for want of a better, and is hardly likely to be
supplanted by another, unless a highly appropriate one
could be found, which I doubt. The word that you sug-
gest Impulse seems to me to imply a driving power
behind it ; also a spasmodic movement unlike that of, say,
the tendency of an ape to become a man and other such
processes.

"In a dramatic epic which I may perhaps assume
The Dynasts to be some philosophy of life was neces-
sary, and I went on using that which I had denoted in my
previous volumes of verse (and to some extent prose) as
being a generalized form of what the thinking world had
gradually come to adopt, myself included. That the Un-

AET. 65-67 REMAINDER OF "THE DYNASTS" 125

conscious Will of the Universe is growing aware of Itself
I believe I may claim as my own idea solely at which I
arrived by reflecting that what has already taken place in
a fraction of the whole (i.e. so much of the world as has
become conscious) is likely to take place in the mass ; and
there being no Will outside the mass that is, the Uni-
verse the whole Will becomes conscious thereby: and
ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic.

"I believe, too, that the Prime Cause, this Will, has
never before been called 'It' in any poetical literature,
English or foreign.

"This theory, too, seems to me to settle the question of
Free-will v. Necessity. The will of a man is, according to
it, neither wholly free nor wholly unfree. When swayed
by the Universal Will (which he mostly must be as a sub-
servient part of it) he is not individually free ; but when-
ever it happens that all the rest of the Great Will is in
equilibrium the minute portion called one person's will is
free, just as a performer's fingers are free to go on playing
the pianoforte of themselves when he talks or thinks of
something else and the head does not rule them.

"In the first edition of a drama of the extent of The
Dynasts there may be, of course, accidental discrepancies
and oversights which seem not quite to harmonize with
these principles ; but I hope they are not many.

"The third part will probably not be ready till the end
of this or the beginning of next year ; so that I have no
proofs as yet. I do not think, however, that they would
help you much in your proposed article. The first and
second parts already published, and some of the poems in
Poems of the Past and the Present^ exhibit fairly enough
the whole philosophy."

Concerning Hardy's remark in this letter on the Un-
conscious Will being an idea already current, though that
its growing aware of Itself might be newer, and that there
might be discrepancies in the Spirits' philosophy, it may

126 VERSE 1906-08

be stated that he had felt such questions of priority and
discrepancy to be immaterial where the work was offered
as a poem and not as a system of thought.

On the 22nd of June they were guests at King Edward's
Garden Party at Windsor Castle, and a few days later at
Mr. Reginald Smith's met Sir Theodore Martin, then
nearly ninety-one, Hardy remembering when as a young
man he had frequented the pit of Drury Lane to see Lady
Martin then Miss Helen Fauci t in Shakespeare char-
acters. His term at Hyde Park Mansions came to an end
in the latter part of July, and they returned to Max Gate,
though Hardy attended a dinner a week later given by
the Medico-Psychological Society, where he had scientific
discussions with Sir James Crichton-Browne and Sir
Clifford Allbutt, and where one of the speakers interested
Hardy by saying that all great things were done by men
"who were not at ease".

That autumn Sir Frederick and Lady Treves took a
house near Max Gate, and Hardy frequently discussed
with the Serjeant-surgeon a question which had drawn
their attention for a long time, both being Dorset men ;
that of the "poor whites" in Barbados, a degenerate,
decadent race, descendants of the Dorset and Somerset
"rebels" who were banished there by Judge Jeffreys, and
one of whom had been a collateral ancestor of Hardy's on
the maternal side.

He was now reaching a time of life when shadows were
continually falling. His friend Pretor, Fellow of St*
Catherine's College, Cambridge, wrote to tell him he was
dying, and asked him for an epitaph. Hardy thought of
an old one :

If a madness 'tis to weepe

For a man that's falFn asleepe,

How much more for that we call

Death the sweetest sleepe of all !

AET.6 5 -6 7 REMAINDER OF "THE. DYNASTS" 127

They still kept up a little bicycling this autumn, but
he did some writing, finishing the third part of The
"Dynasts in September, and posting the MS. to the pub-
lishers shortly after.

In November he complied with a request from the
Dorsetshire Regiment in India, which had asked him for
a marching tune with the required local affinity for the
use of the fifes-and-drums, and sent out an old tune of
his grandfather's called "The Dorchester Hornpipe",
which he himself had fiddled at dances as a boy. He
wound up the year by sending to the Wessex Society of
Manchester, also at their request, a motto for the Society :

While new tongues call, and novel scenes unfold,
Meet may it be to bear in mind the old. . . .
Vain dreams, indeed, are thoughts of heretofore ;
What then ? Your instant lives are nothing more.

About the same time he forwarded "A Sunday Morn-
ing Tragedy'- to the English Review as wished, where it
appeared shortly after ; and also in fulfilment of a promise,
sent the following old-fashioned psalm-tunes associated
with Dorsetshire to the Society of Dorset Men in London,
of which he was President-elect for the ensuing year :

Frome ; Wareham ; Blandford ; New Poole ; Bridport ;
Lulworth ; Rockborne ; Mercy ; Bridehead ; Charmouth.

The concluding part of The Dynasts was published
about six weeks later and was the cause of his receiving
many enthusiastic letters from friends and strangers,
among which the following from the far West of Australia
may be given as a specimen :

" My thanks for your tremendous new statement in
The Dynasts of the world-old problem of Freewill versus
Necessity, You have carried me on to the mountain with
Jesus of Nazareth, and, viewing with Him the great con-
flict below, one chooses with Him to side with the Spirit
of the Pities, in the belief that they will ultimately

128 VERSE 1906-08

triumph ; and even if they do not we at least will do our
little to add to the joy rather than to the woe of the world.
. , . The Spirit of the Pi ties is indeed young in comparison
with The Years, and so we must be patient. . . . Your
conception of the Immanent Will irresponsible, blind,
but possibly growing into self-consciousness, was of great
significance to me, from my knowledge of Dr. Bucke's
theory of the Cosmic Consciousness."

In connection with this subject it may be here recalled,
In answer to writers who now and later were fond of charg-
ing Hardy with postulating a malignant and fiendish God,
that he never held any views of the sort, merely surmising
an indifferent and unconscious force at the back of things
"that neither good nor evil knows". His view is shown,
in fact, to approximate to Spinoza's and later Ein-
stein's that neither Chance nor Purpose governs the uni-
verse, but Necessity.

END OF PART II

PART III

" TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS ",

"SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE", AND

"MOMENTS OF VISION"

CHAPTER X
DEATHS OF SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH

19081909 : Aet. 6769

IN March he finished preparing a book of selections from
the poems of William Barnes, for the Clarendon Press>
Oxford, with a critical preface and glossary.

In April Lady St. Helier and a party motored from
beyond Newbury to Max Gate and back, arriving within
five minutes of the time specified, although the distance
each way was seventy-five miles. It was considered a good
performance in those days. At the end of the month he
dined at the Royal Academy, but was in Dorchester at a
performance by the local Dramatic Society of some scenes
from The Dynasts the first attempt to put on the stage a
dramatic epic that was not intended for staging at all. In
May he sent his Presidential Address to the Society of
Dorset Men in London, to be read by the Secretary, as he
was always a victim to influenza and throat-trouble if he
read or spoke in London himself; afterwards on request
he sent the original manuscript. (By the way, the address
never was read, so he might have saved himself the trouble
of writing it. What became of the manuscript is unknown.)

The following letter to Mr. Robert Donald in May
explains itself:

" If I felt at all strongly, or indeed weakly, on the desir-
ability of a memorial to Shakespeare in the shape of a
theatre, I would join the Committee. But I do not think
that Shakespeare appertains particularly to the theatrical

131

132 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" i 90 8-o 9

world nowadays, if ever he did. His distinction as a
minister to the theatre is infinitesimal beside his distinc-
tion as a poet, man of letters, and seer of life, and that his
expression of himself was cast in the form of words for
actors and not in the form of books to be read was an
accident of his social circumstances that he himself
despised. I would, besides, hazard the guess that he, of
all poets of high rank whose works have taken a stage
direction, will some day cease altogether to be acted,
and be simply studied.

"I therefore do not see the good of a memorial
theatre, or for that matter any other material monument
to him, and prefer not to join the Committee.

"Nevertheless I sincerely thank you for letting me
know how the movement is progressing, and for your
appreciative thought that my joining the promoters
would be an advantage."

Hardy afterwards modified the latter part of the above
opinion in favour of a colossal statue in some public place.

It appears that the Hardys did not take any house or
flat in London this year, contenting themselves with short
visits and hotel quarters, so that there is not much to men-
tion. From letters it can be gathered that at a dinner his
historic sense was appealed to by the Duchess of St. Albans
taking a diamond pin from her neck and telling him it had
been worn by Nell Gwynne ; and in May or June he paid
aTew days' visit to Lord Curzon at Hackwood Park, where
many of the house-party went into the wood by moon-
light to listen to the nightingale, but made such a babble of
conversation that no nightingale ventured to open his bill.

In July Hardy was again in London with Mrs. Hardy,
and was present at the unveiling by Lord Curzon of the
memorial to "John Oliver Hobbes" (Mrs. Craigie), at
University College, where he had the pleasure of hearing
his writings cried down by a speaker, nobody knowing

THOMAS HARDY
c, 1908

AET. 67-69 SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH 133

him to be present. During some of these days he sat to Sir
Hubert Herkomer for his portrait, kindly presented to him
by the painter. He went on to Cambridge to the Milton
Celebration, where at the house of his friend, Sir Clifford
Allbutt, he met Mr. Robert Bridges, the Poet-Laureate,
for the first time, and made the acquaintance of Dr. Peile,
the Master of Christ's College, Sir James ("Dictionary")
Murray, and others. Comus was played at the theatre,
in which performance young Rupert Brooke appeared as
the attendant Spirit, but Hardy did not speak to him, to
his after regret.

The remainder of the month was spent in Dorset,
where he met for the last time his friend Bosworth Smith,
long a House-master at Harrow, who told him he was
soon to undergo a severe surgical operation under which
indeed he sank and died three months after. This was the
fourth of his friends and relations that had sunk under the
surgeon's knife in four years leaving a blank that noth-
ing could fill.

''August 1 8. The Poet takes note of nothing that he
cannot feel emotively.

"If all hearts were open and all desires known as
they would be if people showed their souls how many
gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad
grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place !"

The autumn was filled by little journeys to cathedrals
and a visit to his sister at Swanage, whither she had gone
for change of air ; and in December he attended a dinner
at the Mansion House to commemorate Milton, from
which he returned in company with his friend Mr. S. H.
Butcher, walking up and down with him late that night
in Russell Square, conversing on many matters as if they
knew they would never meet again. Hardy had a great
liking for him, and was drawn to him for the added reason
that he and his family had been warm friends of Hardy's
dead friend, Horace Moule.

134 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 1908-09

In the following January (1909) the University of
Virginia invited him to attend the celebration of the
looth anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, and in
writing his thanks for the invitation Hardy adds :

"The University of Virginia does well to commem-
orate the birthday of this poet. Now that lapse of time
has reduced the insignificant and petty details of his life
to their true proportion beside the measure of his poetry,
and softened the horror of the correct classes at his lack of
respectability, that fantastic and romantic genius shows
himself in all his rarity. His qualities, which would have
been extraordinary anywhere, are much more extraor-
dinary for the America of his date.

"Why one who was in many ways disadvantageously
circumstanced for the development of the art of poetry
should have been the first to realize to the full the pos-
sibilities of the English language in rhyme and alliteration
is not easily explicable.

"It is a matter for curious conjecture whether his
achievements in verse would have been the same if
the five years of childhood spent in England had been
extended to adult life. That "unmerciful disaster' hin-
dered those achievements from being carried further
must be an endless regret to lovers of poetry."

At the beginning of this year Hardy was appointed by
the Dorset Court of Quarter Sessions a Representative
Governor of the Dorchester Grammar School, a position
he filled till the end of 1925. He said he was not practical
enough to make a good governor, but was influenced to
accept the office by the fact that his namesake, Thomas
Hardy of Melcombe Regis, who died in 1599, was the
founder of the school. The latter has a monument in St.
Peter's Church, Dorchester, 1 and is believed to have been
of the same stock as the Thomas Hardy of this memoir.

l See The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 6,

AET. 67-69 SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH 135

In March came the last letter he was ever to receive
from George Meredith, in which the elder writes :

"The French review herewith comes to my address
and is, as you see by the superscription, intended for you-

"I am reminded that you are among the kind souls who
thought of me on my Both [birthday] and have not been
thanked for their testimony of it. . . . The book [The Dy-
nasts] was welcome all the more as being a sign that this
big work was off your mind* How it may have been re-
ceived I cannot say, but any book on so large a scale has
to suffer the fate of a Panorama, and must be visited
again and again for a just impression of it to be taken. I
saw that somewhere in your neighbourhood it was repre-
sented in action. That is the way to bring it more
rapidly home to the mind. But the speaker of Josephine's
last words would have to be a choice one."

The representation had been in Dorchester, and was
limited to a few of the country scenes.

On the loth April he heard of the death of Swinburne,
which was the occasion of his writing the following letter :

"MAX GATE, April 12, 1909.

" For several reasons I could not bring myself to write
on Swinburne immediately I heard that, to use his own
words, 'Fate had undone the bondage of the gods' for
him. . . .

"No doubt the press will say some good words about
him now he is dead and does not care whether it says
them or no. Well, I remember what it said in 1866, when
he did care, though you do not remember it, and how it
made the blood of some of us young men boil.

"Was there ever such a country looking back at the
life, work, and death of Swinburne is there any other
country in Europe whose attitude towards a deceased
poet of his rank would have been so ignoring and almost
contemptuous ? I except The Times, which has the fairest

136 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 1908-09

estimate I have yet seen. But read The Academy and The
Nation.

"The kindly cowardice of many papers is overwhelm-
ing him with such toleration, such theological judge-
ments, hypocritical sympathy, and misdirected eulogy
that, to use his own words again, "it makes one sick in a
corner' or as we say down here in Wessex, 'it is enough
to make every little dog run to mixen.'

"However, we are getting on in our appreciativeness
of poets. One thinks of those other two lyricists, Burns
and Shelley, at this time, for obvious reasons, and of how
much harder it was with them. We know how Burns was
treated at Dumfries, but by the time that Swinburne was
a young man Burns had advanced so far as to be regarded
as no worse than * the glory and the shame of literature'
(in the words of a critic of that date)* As for Shelley, he
was not tolerated at all in his lifetime. But Swinburne
has been tolerated at any rate since he has not written
anything to speak of. And a few months ago, when old
and enfeebled, he was honoured by a rumour that he had
been offered a complimentary degree at Oxford. And
Shelley too, in these latter days of our memory, has been
favoured so far as to be considered no lower than an
ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings in vain. . . ,

"I was so late in getting my poetical barge under way,
and he was so early with his flotilla besides my being be-
tween three and four years younger, and being nominally
an architect (an awful imposter at that, really) that
though I read him as he came out I did not personally know
him till many years after the Poems and Ballads year. . . .

"T. H."

"April 13. A genius for repartee is a gift for saying
what a wise man thinks only/'

"April 15. Day of Swinburne's funeral. Find I can-

AET. 67-69 SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH 137

not go with this rheumatism, though it is but slight, the

journey being so roundabout.

"Thought of some of Swinburne's lines : e.g.,

"On Shelley: 'Q sole thing sweeter than thine own

songs were/

"On Newman and Carlyle: 'With all our hearts we

praise you whom ye hate/

"On Time : 'For time is as wind and as waves are we/
"On Man : 'Save his own soul he hath no star/" 1

In May Hardy was in London, and walking along
Dover Street on his way to the Academy saw on a poster
the announcement of the death of Meredith. He went on
to the Athenaeum and wrote some memorial lines on his
friend, which were published a day or two later in The
Times > and reprinted in Time's Laughingstocks.

On the 22nd he attended a memorial service to Mere-
dith in Westminster Abbey meeting there Maurice
Hewlett, Henry James, Max Beerbohm, Alfred Austin,
and other acquaintance ; and returned to Dorchester the
same afternoon.

In June he was asked to succeed Meredith as President
of the Society of Authors ; and wrote to Mr. Maurice
Hewlett, who had brought the proposal before him :

"I am moved more than I can say by learning that in
the view of the Council I should be offered the succession
to the Presidentship. But I must nevertheless perform
the disagreeable duty of acting upon my own conviction
of what is for the Society's good, and tell you that I feel
compelled to decline the honour. I have long had an
opinion that although in the early years of the Society it
may perhaps have been not unwise to have at its head men
who took no part in its management indeed the mere
names of Tennyson and Meredith were in themselves of

*But Isaiah had said before him: "Mine own arm brought salvation
unto me.**

138 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 1908-09

use to the institution the time has now come when the
President should be one who takes an active part in the
Council's deliberations, and if possible one who lives in or
near London briefly, that he should preside over its
affairs. Now this I could never do. I will not go into the
reasons why, as they are personal and unavoidable. . - .

"I may perhaps add that if there should still be a pre-
ponderating opinion in the Council that an inactive Presi-
dent of the old kind is still desirable, the eminent name of
Lord Morley suggests itself/'

However, the matter ended by the acceptance of the
Presidency by Hardy on further representations by the
Council. His first diffidence had, in fact, arisen, as he
stated, out of consideration for the Society's interests, for
he remembered that the Society included people of all
sorts of views, and that since Swinburne's death there
was no living English writer who had been so abused by
sections of the press as he himself had been in previous
years; "and who knows ", he would drily add, "that I
may not be again ?"

But, as said above, his objections were overruled.

As usual his stay in London had given him influenza,
and he could not go to Aldeburgh as he had intended.
About this time he wrote to a lady of New York in answer
to an inquiry she made :

" The discovery of the law of evolution, which revealed
that all organic creatures are of one family, shifted the
centre of altruism from humanity to the whole conscious
world collectively. Therefore the practice of vivisection,
which might have been defended while the belief ruled that
men and animals are essentially different, has been left by
that discovery without any logical argument in its favour.
And if the practice, to the extent merely of inflicting slight
discomfort now and then, be defended [as I sometimes
hold it may] on grounds of it being good policy for animals
as well as men, it is nevertheless in strictness a wrong, and

AET. 67-69 SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH 139

stands precisely in the same category as would stand its
practice on men themselves/'

In July the influenza had nearly passed off, and he
fulfilled his engagement to go to Aldeburgh the air of
which he always sought if possible after that malady,
having found it a quicker restorative than that of any
other place he knew.

In the second week of this month he was at rehearsals
of Baron F. d'Erlanger's opera, Tess, at Covent Garden,
and on the I4th was present with Mrs. Hardy at the first
performance. Though Italianized to such an extent that
Hardy scarcely recognized it as his novel, it was a great
success in a crowded house, Queen Alexandra being
among the distinguished audience. Destinn's voice suited
the title-character admirably ; her appearance less so.

In response to an invitation by Dr. Max Dessoir, a
professor at the University of Berlin, who wished to have
an epitome of the culture and thought of the time the
" Weltanschauung " of a few representative men in Eng-
land and Germany^ Hardy wrote the following during
August this year :

"We call our age an age of Freedom. Yet Freedom,
under her incubus of armaments, territorial ambitions
smugly disguised as patriotism, superstitions, conven-
tions of every sort, is of such stunted proportions in this
her so-called time, that the human race is likely to be
extinct before Freedom arrives at maturity/*

In the meantime he had been putting together poems
written between whiles, some of them already printed in
periodicals and in addition hunting up quite old ones
dating from 1865, and overlooked in his earlier volumes*
out of which he made a volume called Time's Laughing-
stocks y and sent off the MS. to his publishers the first week
in September.

In continuance of the visits to cathedrals he went this
autumn to Chichester, York, Edinburgh, and Durham ;

140 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 1908-09

and on returning to Dorchester was at a rehearsal of a
play by Mr. A. H. Evans, the dramatist of the local
Debating and Dramatic Society,, based on Far from the
Madding Crowd, which was performed there in the Corn
Exchange, and a few days later before the Society of
Dorset Men in London. Hardy had nothing to do with
the adaptation, but thought it a neater achievement
than the London version of 1882 by Mr. Comyns Carr.
In December Times Laughingstock* was published,
and Hardy was in London, coming back as usual with a
choking sore throat which confined him to his bed till the
New Year, on the eve of which at twelve o'clock he
crouched by the fire and heard in the silence of the night
the ringing of the muffled peal down the chimney of his
bedroom from the neighbouring church of St. George.

CHAPTER XI

THE FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH

1910: Aet. 69-70

IN March, being at Ventnor, Hardy visited Swinburne's
grave at Bonchurch, and composed the poem entitled
"A Singer Asleep". It is remembered by a friend who
accompanied him on this expedition how that windy
March day had a poetry of its own, how primroses
clustered in the hedges, and noisy rooks wheeled in the
air over the little churchyard. Hardy gathered a spray of
ivy and laid it on the grave of that brother-poet of whom
he never spoke save in words of admiration and affection.

" To the Secretary of the Humanitarian League.

"THE ATHENAEUM, PALL MALL, S.W.,

"loth April igio.
"SIR:

"I am glad to think that the Humanitarian League
has attained the handsome age of twenty years the
Animals Defence Department particularly.

"Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the
most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the
common origin of all species, is ethical ; that it logically
involved a readjustment of altruistic morals by enlarging
as a necessity of Tightness the application of what has been
called 'The Golden Rule' beyond the area of mere man-
kind to that of the whole animal kingdom. Possibly Dar-
win himself did not wholly perceive it, though he alluded

141

i 4 2 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" z 9 xo

to it. While man was deemed to be a creation apart from
all other creations, a secondary or tertiary morality was
considered good enough towards the 'inferior' races; but
no person who reasons nowadays can escape the trying
conclusion that this is not maintainable. And though I
myself do not at present see how the principle of equal
justice all round is to be carried out in its entirety, I
recognize that the League is grappling with the question. "
It will be seen that in substance this agrees with a
letter written earlier, and no doubt the subject was much
in his mind just now.

About this time Hardy was asked by the editor of
Harper s Magazine to publish his reminiscences in the
pages of that periodical month by month. He replied :

"I could not appear in a better place. But it is
absolutely unlikely that I shall ever change my present
intention not to produce my reminiscences to the world."

In this same month of April he was looking for a flat
again in London, and found one at Blomfield Court,
Maida Vale, which he and his wife and servants entered in
May. Looking out of the window while at breakfast on the
morning after their arrival, they beheld placarded in the
street an announcement of the death of King Edward.

Hardy saw from the Athenaeum the procession of the
removal of the King's body to Westminster., and the
procession of the funeral from Westminster three days
later. On account of the suggestiveness of such events it
must have been in these days that he wrote "A King's
Soliloquy on the Night of his Funeral". His own seven-
tieth birthday a fortnight later reminded him that he
was a year older than the monarch who had just died.

There was general satisfaction when Hardy's name
appeared as a recipient of the Order of Merit in the Birth-
day List of Honours in June 1910. He received numerous
and gratifying telegrams and letters of congratulation from

AET. 69-70 FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH 143

both friends and strangers, and, though he accepted the
award with characteristic quietude, it was evident that this
sign of official approval of his work brought him pleasure.

At the flat the last one they were to take, as it hap-
pened they received their usual friends as in previous
years, and there were more performances of the Tess
opera ; but in the middle of June they were compelled to
cancel all engagements suddenly owing to Hardy's illness,
which was happily but brief. In July he was able to go
out again, and on the igth went to Marlborough House to
be invested with the Order of Merit. The King received
him pleasantly: "but afterwards I felt that I had failed
in the accustomed formalities."

Back in the country at the end of the month they
entertained some visitors at Max Gate. A brief visit to
Aldeburgh, where he met Professor Bury and Dr. (after-
wards Sir James) Frazer, and a few cycle rides, diversified
the close of this summer.

In September he sat to Mr. William Strang for a
sketch-portrait, which was required for hanging at Wind-
sor Castle among those of other recipients of the Order of
Merit; and on November 16 came the interesting occasion
of the presentation of the freedom of Dorchester to Hardy,
which appealed to his sentiment more perhaps than did
many of those recognitions of his literary achievements
that had come from the uttermost parts of the earth at a
much earlier time. Among the very few speeches or
lectures that he ever delivered, the one he made on this
occasion was perhaps the most felicitous and personal :

"Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen of the Corporation
This is an occasion that speaks for itself, and so, happily,
does not demand many remarks from me. In simply ex-
pressing my sincere thanks for the high compliment paid
me by having my name enrolled with those of the Honor-
ary Freemen of this historic town, I may be allowed to
confess that the freedom of the Borough of Dorchester did

I 44 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 1910

seem to me at first something that I had possessed a long
while, had helped myself to (to speak plainly) , for when I
consider the liberties I have taken with its ancient walls,,
streets, and precincts through the medium of the printing-
press, I feel that I have treated its external features with
the hand of freedom indeed. True, it might be urged that
my Casterbridge (if I may mention seriously a name coined
off-hand in a moment with no thought of its becoming
established and localized) is not Dorchester not even the
Dorchester as it existed sixty years ago, but a dream-place
that never was outside an irresponsible book. Neverthe-
less, when somebody said to me that c Casterbridge' is a
sort of essence of the town as it used to be, 'a place more
Dorchester than Dorchester itself ', I could not absolutely
contradict him, though I could not quite perceive it. At
any rate, it is not a photograph in words, that inartistic
species of literary produce, particularly in respect of per-
sonages. But let me say no more about my own doings.
The chronicle of the town has vivid marks on it. Not to go
back to events of national importance, lurid scenes have
been enacted here within living memory, or not so many
years beyond it, whippings in front of the town-pump,
hangings on the gaol-roof. I myself saw a woman hanged
not 100 yards from where we now stand, and I saw, too,
a man in the .stocks in the back part of this very building.
Then, if one were to recount the election excitements,
Free Trade riots, scenes of soldiers marching down the
town to war, the proclamation of Sovereigns now
crumbled to dust, it would be an interesting local story.
" Miss Burney, in her diary, speaks of its aspect when
she drove through with the rest of King George's Court
on her way to Weymouth. She says : ' The houses have the
most ancient appearance of any that are inhabited that I
have happened to see.' This is not quite the case now, and
though we may regret the disappearance of these old
buildings, I cannot be blind to the difficulty of keeping a

AET. 69-70 FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH 145

town in what may be called working order while retaining
all its ancient features. Yet it must not be forgotten that
these are its chief attractions for visitors, particularly
American visitors. Old houses, in short, have a far larger
commercial value than their owners always remember,
and it is only when they have been destroyed, and tourists
who have come to see them vow in their disappointment
that they will never visit the spot again, that this is realized.
An American gentleman came to me the other day in
quite a bad temper, saying that he had diverged from his
direct route from London to Liverpool to see ancient Dor-
chester, only to discover that he knew a hundred towns in
theUnited States more ancient-looking than tl&sfaug&ter) .
Well, we may be older than we look, like some ladies ; but
if, for instance, the original All-Saints and Trinity
Churches, with their square towers, the castle, the fine
mansion of theTrenchards at the corner of Shirehall Lane,
the old Three Mariners Inn, the old Greyhound, the old
Antelope, Lady Abingdon's house at the corner of Durn-
gate Street, and other mediaeval buildings were still in
their places, more visitors of antiquarian tastes would
probably haunt the town than haunt it now. Old All-
Saints was, I believe, demolished because its buttresses
projected too far into the pavement. What a reason for
destroying a record of 500 years in stone ! I knew the
architect who did it; a milder-mannered man never
scuttled a sacred edifice. Milton's well-known observa-
tion in his Areopagitica ' Almost as well kill a man as kill
a good book' applies not a little to a good old building ;
which is not only a book but a unique manuscript that
has no fellow. But corporations as such cannot help
these removals ; they can only be prevented by the edu-
cation of their owners or temporary trustees, or 3 in the
case of churches, by Government guardianship.

"And when all has been said on the desirability of pre-
serving as much as can be preserved, our power to pre-

146 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 1910

serve is largely an illusion. Where is the Dorchester of my
early recollection I mean the human Dorchester the
kernel of which the houses were but the shell ? Of the
shops as I first recall them not a single owner remains ;
only in two or three instances does even the name remain.
As a German author has said, 'Nothing is permanent but
change '. Here in Dorchester, as elsewhere, I see the streets
and the turnings not far different from those of my school-
boy time ; but the faces that used to be seen at the doors,
the inhabitants, where are they ? I turn up the Weymouth
Road, cross the railway-bridge, enter an iron gate to 'a
slope of green access', and there they are ! There is the
Dorchester that I knew best; there are names on white
stones one after the other, names that recall the voices,
cheerful and sad, anxious and indifferent, that are missing
from the dwellings and pavements. Those who are old
enough to have had that experience may feel that after all
the permanence or otherwise of inanimate Dorchester con-
cerns but the permanence of what is minor and accessory.
"As to the future of the town, my impression is that its
tendency is to become more and more a residential spot,
and that the nature of its business will be mainly that of
administering to the wants of "private residents* as they
are called. There are several reasons for supposing this.
The dryness of its atmosphere and subsoil is unexcelled.
It has the great advantage of standing near the coast with-
out being on it, thus escaping the objections some people
make to a winter residence close to the sea ; while the
marine tincture in its breezes tempers the keenness which
is felt in those of high and dry chalk slopes further inland.
Dorchester's future will not be like its past; we may
be sure of that. Like all other provincial towns, it will
lose its individuality has lost much of it already. We
have , become almost a London suburb owing to the
quickened locomotion, and, though some of us may
regret this, it has to be.

. 69-70 FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH 147

"I will detain you no longer from Mr. Evans's comedy
that is about to be played downstairs. Ruskin somewhere
says that comedy is tragedy if you only look deep enough.
Well, that is a thought to remember ; but to-night, at any
rate, we will all be young and not look too deeply."

After the presentation which was witnessed by Mrs.
Hardy, by Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Newbolt, by the
writer of this memoir, and by other friends, the Dor-
chester Dramatic Society gave for the first time, at the
hands of their own dramatist, an adaptation of Under the
Greenwood Tree entitled The Melhtock Squire the second
title of the novel Hardy himself doing no more than
supply the original carols formerly sung by the Quire of
the parish outshadowed by the name "Mellstock" the
village of Stinsford, a mile from the town. '

In December the American fleet paid a visit to Port-
land Roads, and though the weather was bad while they
were lying there Hardy went on board the battleship Con-
necticut, where he met the captain, commander, and
others ; who, with several more officers, afterwards visited
him and Mrs. Hardy at Max Gate. On the 2gth they
went on board the English Dreadnought, which was also
lying there, and thence to a dance on board the United
States Flagship Louisiana, to which they were welcomed
by Admiral Vreeland.

It was at the end of this year that Hardy published
in the Fortnightly Review some verses entitled "God's
Funeral ". The alternative title he had submitted for the
poem was "The Funeral of Jahveh" the subject being
the gradual decline and extinction in the human race of a
belief in an anthropomorphic god of the King of Dahomey
type a fact recognised by all bodies of theologians for
many years. But the editor, thinking the longer title
clumsy and obscure, chose the other, to which Hardy
made no objection, supposing the meaning of his poem
would be clear enough to readers.

CHAPTER XII

BEREAVEMENT
1911-1912: Aet. 70-72

IN March (1911) Hardy received a letter from M. Emile
Bergerat of Paris asking him to let his name appear as one
of the Committee for honouring Theophile Gautier on his
approaching centenary, to which Hardy readily agreed.
In the same month he visited Bristol Cathedral and Bath
Abbey, and in April attended the funeral of the Mayor of
Dorchester, who had presented him with the freedom of
the borough but a few months earlier. A sequence of verses
by Hardy, entitled "Satires of Circumstance", which
were published in the Fortnightly Review at this junc-
ture, met with much attention both here and in America.

In April he and his brother, in pursuance of a plan of
seeing or re-seeing all the English cathedrals, visited
Lichfield, Worcester, and Hereford.

He makes only one note this spring: "View the
matrices rather than the moulds/'

Hardy had been compelled to decline in February an in-
vitation from the Earl-Marshal to the Coronation in West-
minster Abbey in the coming June. That month found him
on a tour with his brother in the Lake Country, including
Carlisle Cathedral and Castle, where the dungeons were
another reminder to him of how "evil men out of the evil
treasure of their hearts have brought forth evil things".
However, the tour was agreeable enough despite the wet
weather, and probably Hardy got more pleasure out of

AET. 70-72 BEREAVEMENT 149

Coronation Day by spending it on Windermere than he
would have done by spending it in a seat at the Abbey.

Of Grasmere Churchyard he says: "Wordsworth's
headstone and grave are looking very trim and new. A
group of tourists who have never read a line of him sit
near, addressing and sending off picture postcards, . . .
Wrote some verses." He visited Chester Cathedral com-
ing homeward, called at Rugby, and went over the school
and chapel ; and returned to Dorchester through London.

After his return he signed, with many other well-known
people, a protest against the use of aerial vessels in war ;
appealing to all governments "to foster by any means in
their power an international understanding which shall
preserve the world from warfare in the air". A futile pro-
test indeed !

In July Hardy took his sister Katherine on an excur-
sion to North Somerset, stopping at Minehead, and going
on by coach to Porlock and Lynmouth. Thence they went
by steamer to Ilfracombe, intending to proceed through
Exeter to South Devon. But the heat was so great that
further travelling was abandoned, and after going over
the cathedral they returned home.

In the preceding month, it may be remarked, had died
Mr. W. J. Last, A.M.LC.E., Director of the Science
Museum, South Kensington, who was a son of Hardy's
old Dorchester schoolmaster, Isaac Glandfield Last. The
obituary notices that appeared in The Times and other
papers gave details of a life more successful than his
father's, though not of higher intellectual ability than
that by which it had been Hardy's good fortune to profit.

At the end of the month Mr. Sydney Cockerell, direc-
tor of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, called, mainly
to inquire about Hardy 's old manuscripts, which was the
occasion of his looking up those that he could find and
handing them over to Mr. Cockerell to distribute as he
thought fit among any museums that would care to pos-

150 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" 190-12

sess one. Hardy himself preferring to have no voice in the
matter. In the course of October this was done by Mr.
Cockerell, the MSS. of The Dynasts and Tessofthed'Urber-
miles being accepted by the British Museum, of Timers
Laughingstock^ and Jude the Obscure by the Fitzwilliam,
and of Wessex Poems y with illustrations by the author
himself (the only volume he ever largely illustrated), by
Birmingham. Others were distributed from time to time
by Mr. Cockerell, to whom Hardy had sent all the MSS.
for him to do what he liked with, having insisted that "it
would not be becoming for a writer to send his own MSS.
to a museum on his own judgement".

' It may be mentioned in passing that in these months
Mr. F. Saxelby of Birmingham, having been attracted to
Hardy's works by finding in them a name which resembled
his own, published "A Hardy Dictionary" containing
the names of persons and places in the author's novels and
poems. Hardy had offered no objection to its being
issued, but accepted no responsibility for its accuracy.

In November the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic
Society gave another performance of plays from the Wes-
sex novels. This time the selection was the short one-act
piece that Hardy had dramatized himself many years
before, from the story called The Three Strangers y entitled
The ThreeWayjarers; and a rendering by Mr. A. H. Evans
of the tale of The Distracted Preacher. The Hardys' friend,
Mrs. Arthur Henniker, came all the way from London to
see it, and went with his wife and himself.

The curator of the Dorset County Museum having
expressed a wish for a MS. of Hardy's, he sent this month
the holograph of The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Being interested at this time in the only Gothic style
of architecture that can be called especially and exclusively
English the perpendicular style of the fifteenth century
Hardy made a journey to Gloucester to investigate its

AET. 70-72 BEREAVEMENT 151

origin in that cathedral, which he ascertained to be in the
screen between the south aisle and the transept a fact
long known probably to other investigators, but only re-
cently to him. He was so much impressed by the thought
that the inventor's name, like the names of the authors of
so many noble songs and ballads, was unknown, that on
his return he composed a poem thereon, called "The
Abbey Mason", which was published a little later in
Harper's Magazine^ and later still was included in a
volume with other poems.

The illness of his elder sister Mary saddened the close
of 1911 ; and it was during this year that his wife wrote
the Reminiscences printed in the earlier pages of this
book, as if she had premonitions that her end was not far
off; though nobody else suspected it.

The year 1912, which was to advance and end in such
gloom for Hardy, began serenely. In January he went to
London for a day or two and witnessed the performance
of Oedipus at Covent Garden. But in February he learnt
of the death of his friend, General Henniker, and in April
occurred the disaster to the Titanic steamship, upon
which he wrote the poem called "The Convergence of
the Twain ", in aid of the Fund for the sufferers.

On the 22nd April Hardy was correcting proofs for a
new edition of his works, the Wessex Edition, concerning
which he wrote to a friend :

"... I am now on to p. 140 of The Woodlanders
(in copy I mean, not in proofs, of course). That is vol. vi.
Some of the later ones will be shorter. I read ten hours
yesterday finishing the proofs of the * Native * (wh. I have
thus got rid of). I got to like the character of Clym before
I had done with him. I think he is the nicest of all my
heroes, and not a bit like me. On taking up The Woodlanders
and reading it after many years I think I like it as a story y
the best of all. Perhaps that is owing to the locality and

152 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS" i 9 n-i 2

scenery of the action, a part I am very fond of. It seems a
more quaint and fresh story than the 'Native*, and the
characters are very distinctly drawn. . . . Seven o'clock
P.M. It has come on to rain a little: a blackbird is singing
outside. I have read on to p. 185 of The Woodlanders
since the early part of my letter."

The Hardys dined with a few friends in London this
season, but did not take a house,, putting up at a hotel
with which Hardy had long been familiar, the "West
Central" in Southampton Row.

On June I at Max Gate they had a pleasant week-end
visit from Henry Newbolt and W. B. Yeats, who had
been deputed by the Royal Society of Literature to present
Hardy with the Society's gold medal on his seventy-
second birthday. These two eminent men of letters were
the only people entertained at Max Gate for the occasion ;
but everything was done as methodically as if there had
been a large audience. Hardy says : "Newbolt wasted on
the nearly empty room the best speech he ever made in
his life, and Yeats wasted a very good one : mine in re-
turning thanks was as usual a bad one, and the audience
was quite properly limited."

In the middle of June he was in London at Lady St.
Helier's, and went to the play of Bunty putts the Strings
with her. An amusing anticlimax to a story of the three-
crow type occurred in connection with this or some other
popular play of the date. It was currently reported and
credited that Mr. Asquith had gone to see it eight times,
and Mr. Balfour sixteen. Taking Miss Balfour in to din-
ner and discussing the play, Hardy told her of the report,
and she informed him that her brother had been only
once. How few the visits of Mr. Asquith were could not
be ascertained. Possibly he had not gone at all.

Later on in the autumn a letter was addressed to him
on a gross abuse which was said to have occurred that
of publishing details of a lately deceased man's life under

AET. 70-72 BEREAVEMENT 153

the guise of a novel, with assurances of truth scattered in
the newspapers. In the course of his reply he said :

"What should certainly be protested against, in cases
where there is no authorization,, is the mixing of fact and
fiction in unknown proportions. Infinite mischief would
lie in that. If any statements in the dress of fiction are
covertly hinted to be fact, all must be fact, and nothing
else but fact, for obvious reasons. The power of getting
lies believed about people through that channel after they
are dead, by stirring in a few truths, is a horror to
contemplate."

"June. Here is a sentence from the Edinburgh Review
of a short time back which I might have written myself :
"The division [of poems] into separate groups [ballad,
lyrical, narrative, &c.] is frequently a question of the
preponderance, not of the exclusive possession, of certain
aesthetic elements.' "

Meanwhile in July he had returned to Max Gate just
in time to be at a garden party on July 16 the last his
wife ever gave which it would have much grieved him
afterwards to have missed. The afternoon was sunny and
the guests numerous on this final one of many occasions
of such a gathering on the lawn there, and nobody fore-
saw the shadow that was so soon to fall on the house,
Mrs. Hardy being then, apparently, in her customary
health and vigour. In the following month, August, she
was at Weymouth for the last time; and Hardy took
her and her niece to see the performance of Bunty at the
Pavilion Theatre. It was her last play.

However, she was noticed to be weaker later on in the
autumn, though not ill, and complained of her heart at
times. Strangely enough, she one day suddenly sat down
to the piano and played a long series of her favourite old
tunes, saying at the end she would never play any more.
The poem called "The Last Performance " approximately
describes this incident.

154 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS"

She went out up to the 22nd November, when, though
it was a damp, dark afternoon, she motored to pay a visit
six miles off. The next day she was distinctly unwell, and
the day after that was her birthday, when she seemed de-
pressed. On the 25th two ladies called; and though she
consulted with her husband whether or not to go down-
stairs to see them, and he suggested that she should not
in her weak state, she did go down. The strain obliged
her to retire immediately they had left. She never went
downstairs again.

The next day she agreed to see a doctor, who did not
think her seriously ill, but weak from want of nourish-
ment through indigestion. In the evening she assented
quite willingly to Hardy's suggestion that he should go to
a rehearsal in Dorchester of a play made by the local
company, that he had promised to attend. When he got
back at eleven o'clock all the house was in bed and he
did not disturb her.

The next morning the maid told him in answer to his
inquiry that when she had as usual entered Mrs. Hardy's
room a little earlier she had said she was better, and
would probably get up later on ; but that she now seemed
worse. Hastening to her he was shocked to find her much
worse, lying with her eyes closed and unconscious. The
doctor came quite quickly, but before he arrived her
breathing softened and ceased.

It was the day fixed for the performance of The
Trumpet-Major in Dorchester, and it being found im-
possible to put off the play at such short notice, so many
people having come from a distance for it, it was pro-
duced, an announcement of Mrs. Hardy's unexpected
death being made from the stage.

Many years earlier she had fancied that she would like
to be buried at Plymouth, her native place ; but on going
there to the funeral of her father she found that during a

70-72 BEREAVEMENT 155

"restoration" the family vault in Charles Churchyard,
though it was not full, had been broken into, if not
removed altogether, either to alter the entrance to the
church, or to erect steps ; and on coming back she told
her husband that this had quite destroyed her wish to be
taken there, since she could not lie near her parents.

There was one nook, indeed, which in some respects
was pre-eminently the place where she might have lain
the graveyard of St. Juliot, Cornwall whose dilapidated
old church had been the cause of their meeting, and in
whose precincts the early scenes of their romance had a
brief being. But circumstances ordered otherwise. Hardy
did not favour the thought of her being carried to that
lonely coast unless he could be carried thither likewise in
due time ; and on this point all was uncertain. The funeral
was accordingly at Stinsford, a mile from Dorchester and
Max Gate, where the Hardys had buried for many years.

She had not mentioned to her husband, or to anybody
else so far as he could discover, that she had any anticipa-
tions of death before it occurred so suddenly. Yet on his
discovery of the manuscript of her "Recollections ", writ-
ten only a year earlier, it seemed as if some kind of pre-
sentiment must have crossed her mind that she was not
to be much longer in the world, and that if her brief
memories were to be written it were best to write them
quickly. This is, however, but conjecture.

CHAPTER XIII

REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE, AND WAR-WRITINGS
1913-1914: Aet. 72-74

MANY poems were written by Hardy at the end of the
previous year and the early part of this more than he
had ever written before in the same space of time as can
be seen by referring to their subjects, as well as to the
dates attached to them. To adopt Walpole's words con-
cerning Gray, Hardy was "in flower" in these days, and,
like Gray's, his flower was sad-coloured.

On March 6 almost to a day, forty-three years after
his first journey to Cornwall he started for St. Julio t,
putting up at Boscastle, and visiting Pentargan Bay and
Beeny Cliff, on which he had not once set foot in the long
interval.

He found the rectory and other scenes with which he
had been so familiar changed a little, but not greatly, and
returning by way of Plymouth arranged for a memorial
tablet to Mrs. Hardy in the church with which she had
been so closely associated as organist before her marriage,
and in other ways. The tablet was afterwards erected to
his own design, as was also the tomb in Stinsford Church-
yard in the preparation of which memorials he had to
revive a species of work that he had been unaccustomed
to since the years of his architectural pupilage.

In June he left for Cambridge to receive the Hon.
Degree of Litt.D., and lunched with the Master of Mag-
dalene (also Vice-Chancellor), Dr. Donaldson, and Lady

156

'M.1913

ij/wtoflji,

AET. 7*-74 REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE 157

Albinia Donaldson, meeting some for the first and last
time the Master of Trinity and Mrs. Butler, John Sar-
gent, Arthur Benson, Henry Jackson, Vice-Master of
Trinity and the Regius Professor of Greek, Sir James
Murray, and many others. The visit was full of interest
for Hardy as the sequel to his long indirect connection
with the University in several ways, partly through the
many graduates who were his friends, his frequent visits
to the place, and his intention in the eighteen-sixties to
go up himself for a pass-degree, which was abandoned
mainly owing to his discovery that he could not con-
scientiously carry out his idea of taking Orders. A few
weeks later he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Mag-
dalene, as will be seen.

In July he was in London once or twice, meeting Dr.
Page, the American Ambassador, Mr. and Mrs. Asquith,
and others here and there. A German translation of The
Mayor of Casterbridge under the title of Der Burgermeister
was begun as a serial in Germany at this time, and in the
same month the gift of the MS. of his poem on Swin-
burne's death was acknowledged by the Newnes Librarian
at Putney, an offer which had originated with Mr. Sydney
Cockerell. In response to a request from the Secretary of
the General Blind Association, he gave his permission to
put some of his books in prose and verse into Braille type
for the use of the blind, adding :

"I cannot very well suggest which, as I do not know
the length you require. ... If a full-length novel, I
would suggest The Trumpet-Major. If verse, the Battle of
Trafalgar scenes or the Battle of Waterloo scenes from
The Dynasts or a selection from the Poems. ... I am
assuming that you require scenes of action rather than
those of reflection or analysis."

In August he was at Blandford with Mr. John Lane
searching about for facts and scenes that might illustrate
the life of Alfred Stevens, the sculptor, whose best-known

158 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS"

work is the Wellington monument in St. Paul's, and who
was born and grew up in this town. Hardy had suggested
that It ought to be written before it was too late, and Mr.
Lane had taken up the idea. The house of his birth was
discovered, but not much material seems to have been
gained. It was not till a year or two later that Hardy dis-
covered that Stevens's father painted the Ten Command-
ments in the church of Blandford St. Mary., his name
being in the corner: "G. Stevens, Blandford, 1825."

"September 15. Thoughts on the recent school of
novel-writers. They forget in their insistence on life, and
nothing but life, in a plain slice, that a story must be worth
the tellingy that a good deal of life is not worth any such
thing,, and that they must not occupy a reader's time with
what he can get at first hand anywhere around him."

The autumn glided on with its trifling incidents. In
the muddle of Hardy's unmistressed housekeeping ani-
mal pets of his late wife died, strayed, or were killed,
much to Hardy's regret; short visits were paid by friends,
including Mr. Frederic Harrison; and in November, while
staying with the Master of his College, Hardy was ad-
mitted in chapel as Honorary Fellow, "The ceremony,
which consists of a Latin formula of admission before the
Altar, and the handing-in of the new Fellow into his stall,
was not unimpressive", said the Cambridge Review.
Hardy had read the lessons in Church in his young man-
hood, besides having had much to do with churches in
otherways, and the experience may have recalled the old
ecclesiastical times. In the evening he dined in Hall,
where "the Master proposed the health of him who was
no longer a guest, but one of the Society, and the day's
proceedings terminated happily", continued the Cam-
bridge Review. It was an agreeable evening for Hardy,
Mr. A. E. Housman and Sir Clifford Allbutt being present
as guests among others of his friends.

A good sketch-painting of him was made this autumn

AET. 72-74 REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE 159

by Mr. Fuller Maitland for his friend Arthur Benson, to
be hung with the other portraits in the hall of Magdalene
College ; and in the middle of November the Dorchester
amateurs' version of The Woodlanders adapted by them-
selves, was performed on the Dorchester stage, but
Hardy was not present on the occasion.

In the December of this year M. Anatole France was
entertained at a dinner in London by a committee of men
of letters and of affairs. Hardy was much disappointed
at being unable to attend ; and he wrote to express his
regret, adding :

"In these days when the literature of narrative and
verse seems to be losing its qualities as an art, and to be
assuming a structureless and conglomerate character, it is
a privilege that we should have come into our midst a
writer who is faithful to the principles that make for per-
manence, who never forgets the value of organic form and
symmetry, the force of reserve, and the emphasis of
understatement, even in his lighter works/'

In February of the year following (1914) the subject
of this memoir married the present writer.

In the spring of the same year Hardy was at the din-
ner of the Royal Academy, and he and his wife saw several
friends in London, afterwards proceeding to Cambridge,
where they spent a pleasant week in visiting and meeting
Mr. Arthur Benson, Professor and Mrs. Bury, Mr. and
Mrs. Cockerell, Professor Quiller-Couch, the Master of
Jesus, Dr. James, Provost of King's, Dr. and Mrs. McTag-
gart, and the oldest friend of Hardy's in Cambridge, or
for that matter anywhere, Mr. Charles Moule, President
and formerly Tutor of Corpus, who had known him as a
boy, A dinner at St. John's the "Porte-Latin Feast"
with the mellow radiance of the dark mahogany tables,
curling tobacco smoke, and old red wine, charmed Hardy,
in spite of his drinking very little, and not smoking at all.

160 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS"

A visit to Girton and tea with Miss Jones and members of
her staff ended the Cambridge week for them.

Although Hardy had no sort of anticipation of the re-
strictions that the war was so soon to bring on motoring,
he went about in a car this early summer almost as if he
foresaw what was coming, taking his wife to Exeter,
Plymouth,, and back across Dartmoor-
After serving as a Grand Juror at the Assizes he dined
during June with the Royal Institute of British Archi-
tects, a body of which he had never lost sight on account
of his early associations with the profession, though
nearly all the members he had known except his old
acquaintance, the Vice-President, John Slater, and the
Blomfields had passed away.

A communication from men of letters and art in Ger-
many who thought of honouring the memory of Friedrich
Nietzsche on the seventieth anniversary of his birth, was
the occasion of Hardy's writing at this date :

"It is a question whether Nietzsche's philosophy is
sufficiently coherent to be of great ultimate value, and
whether those views of his which seem so novel and strik-
ing appear thus only because they have been rejected for
so many centuries as inadmissible under humane rule.

"A continuity of consciousness through the human
race would be the only justification of his proposed
measures.

r"He assumes throughout the great worth intrinsically
of human masterfulness. The universe is to him a perfect
machine which only requires thorough handling to work
wonders. He forgets that the universe is an imperfect
machine, and that to do good with an ill-working instru-
ment requires endless adjustments and compromises."*

There was nothing to tell of the convulsion of nations
that was now imminent, and in Dorset they visited vari-
ous friends and stayed a week-end with Sir Henry and
Lady Hoare at Stourhead (where they met as their fellow

MRS, HARDY
From a drawing by W. Strang, R.A.

AET. 72-74 REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE 161

guests Mr. and Mrs* Charles Whibley, the former of
whom Hardy had long known, though they had not met
for years). To Hardy as to ordinary civilians the murder
at Serajevo was a lurid and striking tragedy, but carried
no indication that it would much affect English life. On
July 28 th, they were at a quiet little garden party near
Dorchester, and still there was no sign of the coming
storm : the next day they lunched about five miles off
with friends at Ilsington, and paid a call or two this
being the day on which war was declared by Austria on
Serbia. Hardy made a few entries just after this date :

"August 4, n P.M. War declared with Germany/'

On this day they were lunching at Athelhampton Hall,
six miles off, where a telegram came announcing the
rumour to be fact. A discussion arose about food, and
there was almost a panic at the table, nobody having any
stock. But the full dimensions of what the English decla-
ration meant were not quite realized at once. Their host
disappeared to inquire into his stock of flour. The whole
news and what it involved burst upon Hardy's mind next
morning, for though most people were saying the war
would be over by Christmas he felt it might be a matter
of years and untold disaster.

"August 9-15. English Expeditionary Force crosses
the Channel to assist France and Belgium/'

"August on wards. War excitement. 'Quicquiddelirant
reges, plectuntur Achivi P " It was the quotation Hardy
had made at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war
forty-four years earlier, when he was quite a young man.

He had been completely at fault, as he often owned,
on the coming so soon of such a convulsion as the war,
though only three or four months before it broke out he
had printed a prophetic poem in the Fortnightly entitled
" Channel Firing", whereof the theme,

All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder,

162 "TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS"

was, to say the least, a perception singularly coincident.
However, as stated, that it would really burst, he doubted.
When the noisy crew of music-hall Jingoes said exultingly,
years earlier, that Germany was. as anxious for war as
they were themselves, he had felt convinced that they were
wrong. He had thought that the play, An Englishman's
Home, which he witnessed by chance when it was pro-
duced, ought to have been suppressed as provocative, since
it gave Germany, even if pacific in intention beforehand,
a reason, or excuse, for directing her mind on a war with
England. A long study of the European wars of a century
earlier had made it appear to him that common sense had
taken the place of bluster in men 's minds ; and he felt this
so strongly that in the very year before war burst on
Europe he wrote some verses called "His Country", bear-
ing on the decline of antagonism between peoples ; and as
long before as 1901 he composed a poem called "The Sick
Battle-God ", which assumed that zest for slaughter was
dying out. It was seldom he had felt so heavy at heart as
in seeing his old view of the gradual bettering of human
nature, as expressed in these verses of 1901, completely
shattered by the events of 1914 and onwards. War, he had
supposed, had grown too coldly scientific to kindle again
for long all the ardent romance which had characterized
it down to Napoleonic times, when the most intense battles
were over in a day, and the most exciting tactics and
strategy led to the death of comparatively few combatants.
Hence nobody was more amazed than he at the German
incursion into Belgium, and the contemplation of it led
him to despair of the world 's history thenceforward. He
had not reckoned on the power still retained there by the
governing castes whose interests were not the people's. It
was, however, no use to despair, and since Germany had
not shown the rationality he had expected of her, he pres-
ently began to consider if there was anything he an old
man of seventy-four could do in the critical circum-

AET. 72-74 REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE 163

stances. A slight opening seemed to offer when he received
a letter from the Government asking his attendance at a
private Conference in which eminent literary men and
women who commanded confidence abroad "should take
steps to place the strength of the British case and the
principles for which the British troops and their allies are
fighting before the populations of neutral countries". He
went to London expressly to attend, as explained in the
following memorandum :

"September 2. To London in obedience to a summons
by Mr. Masterman, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan-
caster, at the instance of the Cabinet, for the organiza-
tion of public statements of the strength of the British
case and principles in the war by well-known men of
letters."

This meeting was at Wellington House, Buckingham
Gate, and in view of what the country was entering on
has a historic significance. There was a medley of writers
present, including, in addition to the Chairman, Mr.
Masterrnan, among Hardy's friends and acquaintance,
Sir James Barrie, Sir Henry Newbolt, J. W. Mackail, Arthur
and Monsignor Benson, John Galsworthy, Sir Owen Sea-
man, G. M. Trevelyan, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, John
Masefield, Robert Bridges, Anthony Hope Hawkins, Gil-
bert Murray, and many others. Whatever the effect of the
discussion, the scene was impressive to more than one of
them there. In recalling it Hardy said that the yellow
September sun shone in from the dusty street with a
tragic cast upon them, as they sat round the large blue
table, full of misgivings, yet unforeseeing in all their com-
pleteness the tremendous events that were to follow. The
same evening Hardy left London " the streets hot and
sad, and bustling with soldiers and recruits" to set about
some contribution to the various forms of manifesto that
had been discussed.

In Dorset the Hardys kept up between whiles their

164 "SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE" 1913-14

motoring through September, visiting Broadwindsor, Ax-
minster, the summit called " Cross-in~hand ", from which
both the Bristol and English Channels are visible, and on
which many years earlier Hardy had written a traditional
poem," The Lost Pyx" ; also Bridport, Abbotsbury,Porti-
sham, including the old residence of Admiral Hardy's
father, still intact with its dial in the garden, dated
1767.

In the same month he published in The Times the
soldiers ' war-song called "Men who March Away ", which
won an enormous popularity ; and in October wrote "Eng-
land to Germany", a sonnet "On the Belgian Expatria-
tion" for King Albert's Book> and in the papers a letter
on the destruction of Reims Cathedral. This month, too,
he brought out another volume of verses entitled Satires
of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries the book being
made up of the "Satires in Fifteen Glimpses " 5 published
in a periodical in 191 1, and other poems of a very different
kind with which the satires ill harmonized the latter
filling but fifteen pages in a volume of 230 pages. These
were caustically humorous productions which had been
issued with a light heart before the war. So much shadow,
domestic and public, had passed over his head since he
had written the satires that he was in no mood now to
publish humour or irony, and hence he would readily have
suppressed them if they had not already gained such cur-
rency from magazine publication that he could not do it.
The "Lyrics and Reveries" which filled the far greater
part of the volume, contained some of the tenderest and
least satirical verse that ever came from his pen.

In November he and his wife went to London to a
rehearsal of a portion of The Dynasts^ which Mr. Granville-
Barker was then preparing for the stage at the Kingsway
Theatre, and which was produced there on the 25th No-
vember, though the author had never dreamt of a single
scene of it being staged. Owing to a cold Hardy was

AET. 72-74 REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE 165

unable to be present on the first representation but he
went up two or three weeks later.

Hardy's idea had been that the performance should
be called what it really was, namely^ "Scenes from The
Dynasts" as being less liable to misconception than the
book-title unmodified, since people might suppose the
whole epic-drama was to be presented, which was quite
an impossibility, However 3 as the scheme of the produc-
tion was Mr. Granville-Barker's own, as he had himself
selected all the scenes, Hardy did not interfere, either with
this or any other detail. The one feature he could par-
ticularly have wished altered was that of retaining indoor
architecture for outdoor scenes > it being difficult for the
spectator to realize say in the Battle of Waterloo that
an open field was represented when pillars and architraves
hemmed it in. He thought that for the open scenes a
perfectly plain green floor cloth and blue backcloth would
have suited better. But the theatre 's resources of space
were very limited. However, the production was artisti-
cally successful.

More verses on the war were written by Hardy in
December, including "An Appeal to America**, A sad
vigil, during which no bells were heard at Max Gate,
brought in the first New Year of this unprecedented
"breaking of nations".

It may be added here that the war destroyed all
Hardy 's belief in the gradual ennoblement of man, a be-
lief he had held for many years, as is shown by poems
like "The Sick Battle-God", and others. He said he would
probably not have ended The Dynasts as he did end it if
he could have foreseen what was going to happen within
a few years.

Moreover, the war gave the coup de grace to any con-
ception he may have nourished of a fundamental ultimate
Wisdom at the back of things. With his views on necessi-
tation, or at most a very limited free will, events seemed

1 66 ff SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCED

to show him that a fancy he had often held and expressed*
that the never-ending push of the Universe was an un-
purposive and irresponsible groping in the direction of
the least resistance, might possibly be the real truth.
"Whether or no"* he would say,

"Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando."

MR. AND MRS, HARDY AT MAX GATE, 1914

[E. 0. Hoppt

CHAPTER XIV

WAR EFFORTS, DEATHS OF RELATIVES, AND
"MOMENTS OF VISION"

1915-1917: Aet. 74-77

HE seems to have been studying the Principia Ethica of
Dr. G. E. Moore early this year ; and also the philosophy
of Bergson. Writing on the latter in answer to a letter
from Dr. C. W. Saleeby on the subject, he states:

"I suppose I may think that you are more or less a
disciple of his, or fellow-philosopher with him. Therefore
you may be rather shocked at some views I hold about his
teaching or did hold, anyhow. His theories are much
pleasanter ones than those they contest, and I for one
would gladly believe them ; but I cannot help feeling all
the time that his is rather an imaginative and poetical
mind than a reasoner's^ and that for his charming and
attractive assertions he does not adduce any proofs what-
ever. His use of the word c creation * seems to me loose and
vague. Then as to conduct : I fail to see how, if it is not
mechanism, it can be other than caprice, though he denies
it. Yet I quite agree with him in regarding finalism as an
erroneous doctrine. He says, however, that mechanism
and finalism are only external views of our conduct 'Our
conduct extends between them, and slips much further'.
Well it may, but he nowhere shows that it does.

"Then again : 'A mechanistic conception , . . treats
the living as the inert. . . . Let us, on the contrary, trace
a line of demarcation between the inert and the living/

167

168 "MOMENTS OF VISION" 1915-17

Well, let us, to our great pleasure, if we can see why we
should introduce an inconsistent rupture of Order into a
uniform and consistent Law of the same.

" You will see how much I want to have the pleasure
of being a Bergsonian. But I fear his theory is, in the bulk,
only our old friend Dualism in a new suit of clothes an
ingenious fancy without real foundation, and more com-
plicated than the fancies he endeavours to overthrow.

"You must not think me a hard-headed rationalist for
all this. Half my time particularly when writing verse
I 'believe' (in the modern sense of the word) not only in
the things Bergson believes in, but in spectres, mysterious
voices, intuitions, omens, dreams, haunted places, etc.,
etc. But I do not believe in them in the old sense of the
word any more for that. . . .

"By the way, how do you explain the following from
the Cambridge Magazine, by a writer whom I imagine to
be of a school of thinkers akin to your own, concerning
Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable ?

" ' We doubt if there is a single philosopher alive to-day
who would subscribe to it. Even men of science are gradu-
ally discarding it in favour of Realism and Pragmatism/

"I am utterly bewildered to understand how the doc-
trine that, beyond the knowable, there must always be
an unknown, can be displaced."

In April a distant cousin of promising ability a lieu-
tenant in the 5th Batt. Dorset Regiment came to see him
before going abroad, never to be seen by him again ; and
in the following month he sat to Mr. [Sir Hamo] Thorny-
croft for a model of a head which the sculptor wished to
make* At home he heard that two single-page songs in
manuscript which he had sent to the Red Cross Sale at
Christie's had fetched 48 "Men who March Away",
and "The Night of Trafalgar ".

"May 14. Have been reading a review of Henry James..

74-77 WAR EFFORTS 169

It is remarkable that a writer who has no grain of poetry,
or humour, or spontaneity in his productions, can yet be
a good novelist. Meredith has some poetry, and yet I can
read James when I cannot look at Meredith.'*

"May 27. 'Georgian Poets'. It is a pity that these
promising young writers adopted such a title* The use of
it lacks the modesty of true genius, as it confuses the
poetic chronology, and implies that the hitherto recog-
nized original Georgians Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth,
Byron, etc., are negligible ; or at any rate says that they
do not care whether it implies such or no/'

" June 10. Motored with F. to Bridport, Lyme, Exeter,
and Torquay. Called on Mr. and Mrs. Eden Phillpotts.
Saw their garden and beautiful flowers. Then back to
Teignmouth, Dawlish, and Exeter, putting up at the
'Clarence' opposite the Cathedral."

"June ii. To Cathedral then home via Honiton,
Chard, Crewkerne/*

In July they were in London on a visit to Lady St.
Helier, and paid a long promised call on Sir Frederick and
Lady Treves in Richmond Park. Later on in the month
he was at the funeral at Stinsford of a suddenly lost friend,
Mr. Douglas Thornton the banker, and received visits
from Sir Henry Hoare, who motored over from Stourhead,
and Professor Flinders Petrie, whom he had known but
not seen for many years.

In August he learnt of the loss of his second cousin's
son, Lieutenant George, who had been killed that month
in Gallipoli during a brave advance. Hardy makes this
note of him :

"Frank George, though so remotely related, is the first
one of my family to be killed in battle for the last hundred
years, so far as I know. He might say Militavi non sine
gloria short as his career has been/'

In the autumn Hardy sometimes, and his wife continu-

170 "MOMENTS OF VISION" 1915-17

ally, assisted in the evenings at the soldiers' tea-room
established in the Dorchester Corn Exchange ; they visited
the Australian Camp near Weymouth, and spent two or
three days at Melbury House, On returning he learnt
that his elder sister was again seriously ill. She died the
same week., at his brother's house at Talbothays. The
two poems, "Logs on the Hearth" and "In the Garden",
in Moments of Vision^ evidently refer to her, as also the
Fourth person in " Looking Across", in the same volume.

The hobby of her life had been portrait-painting, and
she had shown great aptitude in catching a likeness, partic-
ularly of her relations, her picture of her mother in oils
bearing a striking resemblance to the striking original.
But she had been doomed to school- teaching, and organ-
playing in this or that village church during all her active
years, and hence was unable to devote sufficient time to
pictorial art till leisure was too late to be effective. Her
character was a somewhat unusual one, being remarkably
unassertive, even when she was in the right, and could
easily have proved it ; so that the point of the following
remark about her is manifest :

"November 29. Buried her under the yew-tree where
the rest of us lie. As Mr. Cowley read the words of the
psalm 'Dixi Custodiam* they reminded me strongly of
her nature, particularly when she was young : ' I held my
tongue and spake nothing : I kept silence, yea, even from
good words/ That was my poor Mary exactly. She never
defended herself; and that not from timidity, but indiffer-
ence to opinion."

The funeral day had been cold and wet, and Hardy
was laid up till the end of the year with a violent bronchi-
tis and racking cough. Nevertheless, during December,
in response to a request from Winchester House for a
contribution to a "Pro-Ally Film" of paragraphs in fac-
simile from authors* writings, which was "to be exhibited
throughout the world and make its appeal particularly

AST. 74-77 WAR EFFORTS 171

to the neutral nations ", he was able to send the following
passages from Pitt's actual speech in the House of Com-
mons a hundred years earlier,, as closely paraphrased in
The Dynasts:

ENGLAND AT BAY

The strange fatality that haunts the times
Wherein our lot is cast, has no example ;
Times are they fraught with peril, trouble, gloom ;
We have to mark their lourings and to face them.

ENGLAND RESOLUTE

Unprecedented and magnificent
As were our strivings in the previous wars,
Our efforts in the present shall transcend them,
As men will learn.

In January of the next year (1916) a war-ballad] of
some weirdness, called "The Dead and the Living One",
which had been written several months before, was pub-
lished in The Sphere and the New York World y and later
reprinted in Moments of Vision.

In February he was again confined to his room with a
cold, the previous one never having quite gone off. But he
managed to send to the Red Cross Sale for this year, not
any work of his own, but "A Sheaf of Victorian Letters",
written to T. H. by many other writers, nearly all deceased,
and of a very interesting kind. Mrs. Hardy also sent to
the same sale three short MSS. of his: "The Oxen",
"The Breaking of Nations ", and a fragment of a story
the whole fetching 72 : los.

A Book of Homage to Shakespeare was printed in April,
for which Hardy had written a piece entitled "To Shake-
speare after three hundred years ", afterwards included in
the volume called Moments of Vision.

In June he served again as Grand Juror at the Assizes,

and was at a rehearsal in Dorchester of Wessex Scenes

from The Dynasts. This, made by "The Hardy Players",

i 7 2 "MOMENTS OF VISION"

was quite a different selection from that of Mr. Granville-
Barker, embracing scenes of a local character only, from
which could be gathered in echoes of drum and trumpet
and alarming rumours, the great events going on else-
where. Though more limited in scope than the former, it
was picturesque and effective as performed by the local
actors at the Weymouth Pavilion a fortnight later, and
was well appreciated by the London press.

In the same month of June he paid a visit with his wife
and remaining sister to a house he had never entered for
forty years. This was Riverside Villa, Sturminster New-
ton t he first he had furnished after his first marriage,
and in which he had written The Return of the Native. He
found it much as it had been in the former years ; and it
was possibly this visit which suggested the poems about
Sturminster that were published in Moments of Vision.
Motorings to Melbury again, to Swanage, and again to
Bridport, passed the midsummer days.

" July 27. Times Literary Supplement on 'What is
Militarism ? * The article suggests a term to express the
cause of the present war, 'hypochondria' (in the Prus-
sians), I should rather have said ' apprehensiveness* . The
term would fit some of the facts like a glove.''

In September they set out by train for Cornwall, break-
ing the journey at Launceston. Thence they went on to
Camelford, Boscastle, and St. Juliot, to see if Hardy's de-
sign and inscription for the tablet in the church had been
properly carried out and erected. At Tintagel they met
quite by accident Hardy's friends, the Stuart-Wortleys,
which made their sojourn at that romantic spot a very
pleasant one.

" September 10. Sunday. To Tintagel Church. We sat
down in a seat bordering the passage to the transept, but
the vicar appalled us by coming to us in his surplice and
saying we were in the way of the choir who would have to
pass there. He banished us to the back of the transept.

74-77 WAR EFFORTS 173

However, when he began his sermon we walked out. He
thought It was done to be even with him, and looked his
indignation ; but it was really because we could not see the
nave lengthwise, which my wife, Emma, had sketched in
watercolours when she was a young woman before it was
* restored', so that I was interested in noting the changes,
as also was F,, who was familiar with the sketch. It was
saddening enough, though doubtless only a chance, that
we were inhospitably received in a church so much visited
and appreciated by one we both had known so well. The
matter was somewhat mended, however, by their singing
the beautiful 34th Psalm to Smart's fine tune, * Wiltshire '.
By the by, that the most poetical verse of that psalm is
omitted from it in Hymns Ancient and Modern shows the
usual ineptness of hymn selectors. We always sang it at
Stinsford. But then, we sang there in the good old High-
and Dry Church way straight from the New Version/*

Multifarious matters filled up the autumn among
others a visit to the large camp of some 5000 German
prisoners in Dorchester; also visits to the English wounded
in hospital, which conjunction led him to say :

"At the German prisoners 5 camp, including the hos-
pital, operating-room, etc., were many sufferers. One
Prussian, in much pain, died whilst I was with him to
my great relief, and his own. Men lie helpless here from
wounds : in the hospital a hundred yards off other men,
English, lie helpless from wounds each scene of suffering
caused by the other !

"These German prisoners seem to think that we are
fighting to exterminate Germany, and though it has been
said that, so far from it, we are fighting to save what is
best in Germany, Cabinet ministers do not in my opinion
speak this out clearly enough.'*

In October the Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy were
published in Macmillan's Golden Treasury Series, a little

i 74 "MOMENTS OF VISION"

book that received some very good reviews ; and in De-
cember the Wessex Scenes from The Dynasts, which had
been produced earlier at Weymouth, were performed at
Dorchester. Some of Hardy's friends, including Sir James
Barrie and Mr. Sydney Cockerell, came to see the piece,
but Hardy could not accompany them, being kept in bed
by another cold. The performances were for Red Cross
Societies.

"January i, 1917. Am scarcely conscious of New
Year's Day."

"January 6. I find I wrote in 1888 that 'Art is con-
cerned with seemings only', which is true."

To the Secretary of the Royal Society oj Literature.

"February 8, 1917.

"DEAR SIR,

" I regret that as I live in a remote part of the country
I cannot attend the meeting of the Entente Committee.

"In respect of the Memorandum proposing certain
basic principles of international education for promoting
ethical ideals that shall conduce to a League of Peace, I
am in hearty agreement with the proposition.

"I would say in considering a modus operandi:

"That nothing effectual will be accomplished in the
cause of Peace till the sentiment of Patriotism be freed
from the narrow meaning attaching to it in the past (still
upheld by Junkers and Jingoists) and be extended to the
whole globe.

"On theotherhand, thatthesentimentof.Pom^^^j'
if the sense of a contrast be really rhetorically necessary
attach only to other planets and their inhabitants, if any.

"I may add that I have been writing in advocacy of
those views for the last twenty years/'

AET. 74-77 WAR EFFORTS 175

To Dr. L. Litwinski*

"March 7, 1917.
"DEAR SIR,

"I feel much honoured by your request that I should
be a member of the Committee for commemorating two
such writers of distinction as Verhaeren and Sienkiewicz.
But for reasons of increasing years and my living so far
from London I have latterly been compelled to give up
membership with several associations ; and I am there-
fore sorry to say that I must refrain from joining any new
committee in which I should be unable actively to support
the cause, even when so worthy as the present one/'

In this March also a sonnet by him named "A Call to
National Service " was printed in the newspapers. An
article in the April Fortnightly by Mr. Courtney, the edi-
tor, on Hardy's writings, especially The Dynasts y interested
him not only by its appreciativeness, but also by the
aspect some features of the drama assumed in the re-
viewer's mind :

"Like so many critics, Mr. Courtney treats my works
of art as if they were a scientific system of philosophy,
although I have repeatedly stated in prefaces and else-
where that the views in them are seemings, provisional im-
pressions only, used for artistic purposes because they
represent approximately the impressions of the age, and
are plausible, till somebody produces better theories of
the universe.

"As to his winding up about a God of Mercy, etc.
if I wished to make a smart retort, which I really should
hate doing, I might say that the Good-God theory having,
after some thousands of years of trial, produced the pres-
ent infamous and disgraceful state of Europe that most
Christian Continent ! a theory of a Goodless-and-Bad-
less God (as in The Dynasts} might perhaps be given a
trial with advantage.

176 "MOMENTS OF VISION" 1915-17

*"Much confusion has arisen and much nonsense has
been talked latterly in connection with the word 'atheist'.
I have never understood how anybody can be one except
in the sense of disbelieving in a tribal god, man-shaped,
fiery-faced and tyrannous^ who flies into a rage on the
slightest provocation ; or^as (according to Horace Wai-
pole) Sir Francis Dashwood defined the Providence be-
lieved in by the Lord Shrewsbury of that date to be a
figure like an old angry man in a blue cloak. . , . 0?ifty
meanings attach to the word 'God' nowadays, the only
reasonable meaning being the Cause of Things, whatever
that cause may be.^Thus no modern thinker can be an
atheist in the modem sense, while all modern thinkers are
atheists in the ancient and exploded sense.'Ji

^n this connection he said once perhaps oftener
that although invidious critics had cast slurs upon him as
Nonconformist, Agnostic, Atheist, Infidel, Immoralist,
Heretic, Pessimist, or something else equally opprobrious
in their eyes, they had never thought of calling him what
they might have called him much more plausibly
churchy ; not in an intellectual sense, but in so far as in-
stincts and emotions ruledj As a child, to be a parson had
been his dream; moreover, he had had several clerical
relatives who held livings ; while his grandfather, father,
uncle, brother, wife, cousin, and two sisters had been
musicians in various churches over a period covering
altogether more than a hundred years. He himself had
frequently read the church lessons, and had at one time
as a young man begun reading for Cambridge with a
view to taking Orders.

His vision had often been that of so many people
brought up under Church of England influences, a giving
of liturgical form to modern ideas, and expressing them
in the same old buildings that had already seen previous

1 In another place he says "Cause" means really but the "invariable
antecedent".

AET. 74-77 WAR EFFORTS 177

reforms successfully carried out. He would say to his
friends, the Warden of Keble, Arthur Benson, and others,
that if the bishops only had a little courage, and would
modify the liturgy by dropping preternatural assumptions
out of it, few churchgoers would object to the change for
long, and congregations would be trebled in a brief time.
The idea was clearly expressed in the "Apology " prefixed
to Late Lyrics and Earlier.

"June 9. It is now the time of long days, when the sun
seems reluctant to take leave of the trees at evening the
shine climbing up the trunks, reappearing higher, and
still fondly grasping the tree- tops till long after."

Later in the month his friend J. M. Barrie suggested
that Hardy should go with him to France^ to which

proposal Hardy replied :

"MAX GATE, DORCHESTER

"23 June 1917.
"My DEAR BARRIE,

"It was so kind of you to concoct that scheme for my
accompanying you to the Front or Back in France. I
thought it over carefully, as it was an attractive idea. But
I have had to come to the conclusion that old men cannot
be young men, and that I must content myself with the
past battles of our country if I want to feel military. If I
had been ten years younger I would have gone.

"I hope you will have a pleasant, or rather, impressive,
time, and the good company you will be in will be helpful
all round. I am living in hope of seeing you on the date
my wife has fixed and of renewing acquaintance with my
old friend Adelphi Terrace.

"Always sincerely yours,

"THOMAS HARDY."

In July his poem "Then and Now" was printed in The
Times y and in the latter half of the month he and his wife
paid a visit of two days to J. M. Barrie at Adelphi Terrace

178 "MOMENTS OF VISION"

a spot with which Hardy had had years of familiarity
when their entertainer was still a child, and which was
attractive to him on that account. Here they had some
interesting meetings with other writers. Upon one memo-
rable evening they sat in a large empty room > which was
afterwards to be Sir James's study but was then being
altered and decorated. From the windows they had a fine
view over the Thames, and searchlights wheeled across
the sky. The only illumination within the room was from
candles placed on the floor to avoid breaking war regula-
tions, which forbade too bright lighting.

He came back to pack up in August his MS. of Moments
of Vision and send to the Messrs. Macmillan.

In October he went with Mrs. Hardy to Plymouth, call-
ing for a day or two upon Mr. and Mrs. Eden Phillpotts
at Torquay on their way. But the weather being wet at
Plymouth they abandoned their stay there and came home.
"I hold that the mission of poetry is to record impres-
sions, not convictions. Wordsworth in his later writings
fell into the error of recording the latter. So also did
Tennyson, and so do many other poets when they grow
old. Absit omen !

"I fear I have always been considered the Dark Horse
of contemporary English literature.

"I was quick to bloom ; late to ripen.
"I believe it would be said by people who knew me
well that I have a faculty (possibly not uncommon) for
burying an emotion in my heart or brain for forty years,
and exhuming it at the end of that time as fresh as when
interred. For instance, the poem entitled 'The Breaking
of Nations' contains a feeling that moved me in 1870,
during the Franco-Prussian war, when I chanced to be
looking at such an agricultural incident in Cornwall. But
I did not write the verses till during the war with Ger-
many of 1914, and onwards. Query : where was that
sentiment hiding itself during more than forty years ?"

AET. 74-77 WAR EFFORTS 179

Hardy's mind seems to have been running on himself
at this time to a degree quite unusual with him, who often
said and his actions showed it that he took no interest
in himself as a personage.

"November 13. I was a child till I was 16 ; a youth till
I was 25 ; a young man till I was 40 or 50."

The above note on his being considered a Dark Horse
was apt enough, when it is known that none of the society
men who met him suspected from his simple manner the
potentialities of observation that were in him. This un-
assertive air, unconsciously worn, served him as an in-
visible coat almost to uncanniness. At houses and clubs
where he encountered other writers and critics and world-
practised readers of character, whose bearing towards
him was often as towards one who did not reach their alti-
tudes, he was seeing through them as though they were
glass. He set down some cutting and satirical notes on
their qualities and compass, but destroyed all of them, not
wishing to leave behind him anything which could be
deemed a gratuitous belittling of others.

This month Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous
Verses was published, and it may have been his occupation
with the proofs that had set him thinking of himself ; and
also caused him to make the following entry: " I do not
expect much notice will be taken of these poems : they
mortify the human sense of self-importance by showing,
or suggesting, that human beings are of no matter or
appreciable value in this nonchalant universe/- He sub-
joined the Dedication of Sordello y where the author re-
marks : " My own faults of expression are many ; but with
care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and
without it what avails the faultlessness of either ?"

It was in this mood that he read such reviews of the
book as were sent him.
^ "December 31. New Year's Eve. Went to bed at eleven.

i8o "MOMENTS OF VISION" 1915-17

East wind. No bells heard. Slept in the New Year, as did
also those 'out there'."

This refers to the poem called "Looking Across" pub-
lished in the new volume, Stinsford Churchyard lying
across the mead from Max Gate.

PART IV
LIFE'S DECLINE

CHAPTER XV
REFLECTIONS ON POETRY

1918: Aet. 77-78

ON January 2 Hardy attended a performance of the
women land- workers in the Corn Exchange. "Met there
Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, Lady Shaftesbury, and other
supporters of the movement. The girls looked most
picturesque in their.raiment of emancipation, which they
evidently enjoyed wearing."

Meanwhile the shadows lengthened. In the second
week of the month he lost his warm-hearted neighbour,
Mrs. A. Brinsley Sheridan, nee Motley., of Frampton
Court. "An old friend of thirty-two years' standing.
She was, I believe, the first to call when we entered this
house at Max Gate, and she remained staunch to the end
of her days."

"January 16. As to reviewing. Apart from a few
brilliant exceptions, poetry is not at bottom criticized as
such, that is, as a particular man's artistic interpretation
of life, but with a secret eye on its theological and politi-
cal propriety. Swinburne used to say to me that so it
would be two thousand years hence ; but I doubt it.

"As to pessimism. My motto is, first correctly diag-
nose the complaint in this case human ills and ascer-
tain the cause : then set about finding a remedy if one
exists. The motto or practice of the optimists is : Blind
the eyes to the real malady, and use empirical panaceas
to suppress the symptoms.

183

184 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918

"Browning said (in a line cited against me so often) :
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would triumph.

"Well, that was a lucky dreamlessness for Browning.
It kept him comfortably unaware of those millions who
cry with the Chorus in Hellas: 'Victorious Wrong, with
vulture scream, Salutes the rising sun ! ?1 or with Hyllus
intheTrachimae; 'Markthe vast injustice of the gods F" 2

"January 24. It is the unwilling mind that stultifies
the contemporary criticism of poetry."

"January 25. The reviewer so often supposes that
where Art is not visible it is unknown to the poet under
criticism. Why does he not think of the art of concealing
art ? There is a good reason why/'

"January 30. English writers who endeavour to
appraise poets, and discriminate the sheep from the goats,
are apt to consider that all true poets must be of one
pattern in their lives and developments. But the glory of
poetry lies in its largeness, admitting among its creators
men of infinite variety. They must all be impractical in
the conduct of their affairs ; nay, they must almost, like
Shelley or Marlowe, be drowned or done to death, or like
Keats, die of consumption. They forget that in the ancient
world no such necessity was recognized ; that Homer sang
as a blind old man, that Aeschylus wrote his best up to
his death at nearly seventy, that the best of Sophocles
appeared between his fifty-fifth and ninetieth years, that
Euripides wrote up to seventy.

"Among those who accomplished late, the poetic
spark must always have been latent ; but its outspringing
may have been frozen and delayed for half a lifetime/'

"January 31. Performance of The Mellstock Quire at
the Corn Exchange, Dorchester, by the local Company
for Hospital purposes. Arranged for the admission of the

1 Shelley's Hellas > line 940. 2 Sophocles' Trachiniae, 1266.

AET. 77-78 REFLECTIONS ON POETRY 185

present 'Mellstock' Quire to see the resuscitated ghosts of
their predecessors/'

The romantic name of " Little Hintock" in The Wood-
landers was advanced to a practical application in the
February of this year by a request from Mr. Dampier
Whetham, once Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College,
Cambridge, whose hobby when in his Dorset home was
dairy farming, to be allowed to define as the "Hintock"
herd, the fine breed of pedigree cattle he was establishing
in the district which Hardy had described under that
fictitious name.

In a United States periodical for March it was stated
that "Thomas Hardy is a realistic novelist who . . . has
a grim determination to go down to posterity wearing the
laurels of a poet". This writer was a glaring illustration of
the danger of reading motives into actions. Of course there
was no "grim determination", no thought of "laurels".
Thomas Hardy was always a person with an unconscious,
or rather unreasoning, tendency ', and the poetic tendency
had been his from the earliest. He would tell that it used
to be said to him at Sir Arthur Blomfield's : "Hardy, there
can hardly have been anybody in the world with less am-
bition than you." At this time the real state of his mind
was, in his own words, that "A sense of the truth of poe-
try, of its supreme place in literature, had awakened itself
in me. At the risk of ruining all my worldly prospects
I dabbled in it . . . was forced out of it. . . . It came
back upon me. . . . All was of the nature of being led by
a mood, without foresight, or regard to whither it led."

To Professor D. A. Robertson^ University of Chicago.

"February yth, 1918

"In reply to your inquiry if I am likely to visit the

1 86 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918

United States after the war, 1 am sorry to say that such
an event is highly improbable. . . .

"The opinion you quote from Lord Bryce to the effect
that Americans do not think internationally, leads one to
ask. Does any country think internationally ? I should
say, none. But there can be no doubt that some countries
think thus more nearly than others ; and in my opinion
the people of America far more than the people of
England."

In April there was sold at Christie's Red Cross Sale
the manuscript of Far from the Madding Crowd. The
interest of the latter at least to Hardy himself lay in
the fact of it being a revenant that for forty years he
had had no other idea but that the manuscript had been
"pulped" after its use in the Cornhitt Magazine in 1874,
since it had completely disappeared, not having been sent
back with the proofs. Hardy's rather whimsical regret
was that he had not written it on better paper, unforesee-
ing the preservation. It afterwards came to his knowledge
that after the sale it went to America, and ultimately was
bought of a New York dealer for the collection of Mr.
A. E. Newton of Pennsylvania.

"April 30. By the will of God some men are born
poetical. Of these some make themselves practical poets,
others are made poets by lapse of time who were hardly
recognized as such. Particularly has this been the case
with the translators of the Bible. They translated into
the language of their age ; then the years began to corrupt
that language as spoken, and to add grey lichen to the
translation; until the moderns who use the corrupted
tongue marvel at the poetry of the old words. When new
they were not more than half so poetical. So that Cover-
dale, Tyndale, and the rest of them are as ghosts what
they never were in flesh."

"May 8. A letter from Sir George Douglas carries me

AET. 77-78 REFLECTIONS ON POETRY 187

back to Wimborne and the time when his brother Frank
lived opposite us there in the Avenue :

They are great trees, no doubt, by now.
That were so thin in bough

That row of limes

When we housed there; I'm loth to reckon when;
The world has turned so many times,
So many, since then !"

Whether any more of this poem was written is not
known.

Two days later Hardy was seized with a violent cough
and cold which confined him for a week. However, he was
well enough by the 23rd to adjudicate at the Police Court
on several food-profiteering cases, undertaken as being
"the only war-work I was capable of", and to receive
some old friends, including Sydney Cockerell, John
Powys, Lady Ilchester, and her mother, Lady London-
derry, of whom he says : "Never saw her again : I had
known her for more than twenty-five years/' A little later
came Mrs. Henry Allhusen, whom he had known from her
childhood, Sir Frederick Treves, and Mr. and Mrs. Rosa-
lind Hyndman (a charming woman) who were staying at
Dorchester for the benefit of the air.

Some sense of the neglect of poetry by the modern
English may have led him to write at this time :

"The poet is like one who enters and mounts a plat-
form to give an address as announced. He opens his page,
looks around, and finds the hall empty "

A little later he says :

"It bridges over the years to think that Gray might
have seen Wordsworth in his cradle, and Wordsworth
might have seen me in mine."

Some days later :

"The people in Shakespeare act as if they were not
quite closely thinking of what they are doing, but were

i88 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918

great philosophers giving the main of their mind to the
general human situation.

"I agree with Tennyson 3 who said he could form no
idea how Shakespeare came to write his plays.

" My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion
of all the ages and the thought of his own."

CHAPTER XVI

POETICAL QUESTIONS: AND MELLSTOCK CLUB-ROOM
1918-1919: Aet. 78-79

" Sunday , June 2. Seventy-eighth birthday. Several
letters/' Among others was an interesting one from a lady
who informed him that some years earlier she had been
made the happiest woman in the world by accidentally
meeting for the first time, by the "Druid Stone" on his
lawn, at the late Mrs. Hardy's last garden-party, the man
who was now her husband. And a little later came one he
much valued, from a man he long had known Mr.
Charles Moule, Senior Fellow and President of Corpus,
Cambridge, enclosing a charming poem to Hardy as his
" almost lifelong friend . . . Too seldom seen since far-
off times" times when the two had visited mediaeval
buildings together, and dived from a boat on summer
mornings into the green water of Weymouth Bay.

In September 1918 he received a circular letter asking
him to assist in bringing home to people certain facts re-
lating to the future with a view to finding a remedy, and
stating that, "It is agreed by all students of modern mili-
tary methods that this war, horrible as it seems to us, is
merciful in comparison with what future wars must be.
Scientific munition-making is only in its infancy. The
next world-war, if there is another, will find the nations
provided not with thousands, but with hundreds of thou-
sands of submarines, and all these as far surpassing the
present types in power and destructiveness as they sur-
pass the feeble beginnings of ten years ago* . . ."

189

190 LIFE'S DECLINE

In his reply he remarked :

"If it be all true that the letter prophesies, I do not
think a world in which such fiendishness is possible to be
worth the saving. Better let Western * civilization ' perish,
and the black and yellow races have a chance.

"However, as a meliorist (not a pessimist as they say)
I think better of the world/'

"December 31. New Year's Eve. Did not sit up.
At the beginning of the year 1919 Hardy received a
letter and volume of verses from Miss Amy Lowell, the
American poetess, who reminded him of her call at the
beginning of the war "two bedraggled ladies", herself
and her friend. Hardy did remember, and their conster-
nation lest they should not be able to get back to their
own country.

In February he signed a declaration of sympathy with

the Jews in support of a movement for " the reconstitution

of Palestine as a National Home for the Jewish People",

and during the spring he received letters from Quiller-

Couch, Crichton-Browne, and other friends on near and

dear relatives they had lost in the war ; about the same

time there appeared a relevant poem by Hardy in The

Athenaum which was much liked, entitled in words from

the Burial Service, "According to the Mighty Working".

In May Edmund Gosse wrote that he was very curious

to know who drew the rather unusual illustration on the

cover of the first edition of The Trumpet-Major. Hardy

was blank on the matter for a time, until, finding a copy,

he remembered that he drew it himself.

Being in London for a few days the same month he
went to the dinner of the Royal Academy the first held
since the war with his friend J. M. Barrie, with whom
he was then staying, and was saddened to find how many
of the guests and Academicians that he had been formerly
accustomed to meet there, had disappeared from the scene.
He felt that he did not wish to go again, and, indeed, he

AET. 78-79 POETICAL QUESTIONS 191

never did. Among the incidents of this visit was a meet-
ing at Lady St. Helier's with Dr. Bernard, Archbishop of
Dublin, and a discussion with him on Coverdale's trans-
lation of the Psalms, and the inferiority of the Latin Vul-
gate in certain passages of them, with which Dr. Bernard
agreed, sending him afterwards the two versions in
parallel readings.

On his birthday in June he did what he had long in-
tended to do took his wife and sister to Salisbury by the
old road which had been travelled by his and their fore-
fathers in their journeys to London via Blandford,
Woodyates Inn, and Harnham Hill, whence Constable had
painted his famous view of the cathedral, and where the
track was still accessible to wheels. Woodyates Inn now
no longer such, to the surprise of everybody since the re-
vival of road traffic still retained its genial hostelry ap-
pearance, and reminded Hardy of the entry in the diary
of one of the daughters of George the Third after she and
the rest of the family had halted there : "At Woodyates
Inn. . .had a beastly breakfast." It is said that Browning's
great-grandfather was oncethelandlordof this famous inn.

In a reply to a letter of this date concerning a new
literary periodical started in Canada, he adds, after some
commendatory remarks :

" But why does the paper stultify its earlier articles by
advertising "The Best Sellers' ? Of all marks of the un~
literary journal this is the clearest. If the Canadian Book-
man were to take a new line and advertise eulogistically
the worst sellers, it might do something towards its obj ect."

Replying to a birthday letter from Mrs. Arthur Hen-
niker, Hardy writes :

"MAX GATE, 5 June 1919.

" Sincere thanks for your good wishes, my dear friend,
which I echo back towards you. I should care more for my
birthdays if at each succeeding one I could see any sign of

i 9 2 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918-19

real improvement in the world as at one time I fondly
hoped there was ; but I fear that what appears much more
evident is that it is getting worse and worse. All develop-
ment is of a material and scientific kind and scarcely
any addition to our knowledge is applied to objects philan-
thropic and ameliorative. I almost think that people were
less pitiless towards their fellow-creatures human and
animal under the Roman Empire than they are now ;
so why does not Christianity throw up the sponge and
say, I am beaten, and let another religion take its
place ?

"I suddenly remember that we had a call from our
Bishop and his wife two or three days ago, so that perhaps
it is rather shabby of me to write as above. By a curi-
ous coincidence we had motored to Salisbury that very
day, and were in his cathedral when he was at our
house.

"Do you mean to go to London for any length of time
this summer ? We are not going again till I don't know
when. We squeezed a good deal into the four days we
were there, and I got a bad throat as usual, but it has
gone off. At Lady St. Helier's we met the Archbishop of
Dublin (English Church^) and found him a pleasant man.
We also met several young poets at Barrie's, where we
were staying,

"We do hope you are well in 'rude health' as they
call it. Florence sends her love, and I am,
"Ever affectionately,

"TH. H."

Shortly after his birthday he received a charming
volume of holograph poems, beautifully bound, from some
forty or fifty living poets. The mark of recognition so
appealed to him that he determined to answer every one
oif the contributors by letter, and ultimately did so, though
it took him a long while ; saying that if they could take

3

s

AET. 78-79 POETICAL QUESTIONS 193

the trouble to write the poems he could certainly take the
trouble to write the letters. It was almost his first awaken-
ing to the consciousness that an opinion had silently
grown up as it were in the night, that he was no mean
power in the contemporary world of poetry.

This "Poets' Tribute" had been arranged by his
friend Siegfried Sassoon, who brought the gift and placed
it in Hardy's hand.

It had impressed him all the more as coming just after
his reading quite by chance in an Australian paper a
quotation from a recent English review of his verse be-
littling one of the poems that called "On Sturminster
Foot Bridge" in a manner that showed the critic to be
quite unaware of what was called "onomatopoeia" in
poetry, the principle on which the lines had been com-
posed. They were intended to convey by their rhythm
the impression of a clucking of ripples into riverside holes
when blown upon by an up-stream wind ; so that when his
reviewer jested on the syllables of the verse sounding like
milk in a cart he was simply stating that the author had
succeeded in doing what he had tried to do the sounds
being similar. As the jest by the English review had come
back to England from Australia, where it had been quoted
to Hardy's damage without the context, he took the
trouble to explain the matter to the writer of the article,
which he would probably have left undone if it had not so
frequently happened that his intentions were shown up as
blunders. But he did not get a more satisfactory reply
than that the critics, like the writer, were sheep in wolves ? '
clothing, and meant no harm.

Hardy's loyalty to his friends was shown by his de-
votion to the Moule family, members of which he had
known intimately when he was a young man. The follow-
ing is probably the last letter he wrote to one whom he
could remember as a small boy :

i 94 LIFE'S DECLINE i 9 ig-i 9

"29 June 1919.
"My DEAR BISHOP OF DURHAM,

"You may agree with me in thinking it a curious coin-
cidence that the evening before your letter arrived, and
when it probably was just posted, we were reading a chap-
ter in Job, and on coming to the verse, 'All the days of
my appointed time will I wait, till my change come', I
interrupted and said : *That was the text of the Vicar of
Fordington one Sunday evening about i86o\ And I can
hear his voice repeating the text as the sermon went on
in the way they used to repeat it in those days just as if
it were yesterday. I wonder if you have ever preached
from that text ; I daresay you have. I should add that he
delivered his discourse without note of any kind.

"My warm thanks for your good feeling about my
birthday. The thoughts of friends about one at these times
take off some of the sadness they bring as one gets old.

"The study of your father's life (too short, really) has
interested me much. I well remember the cholera years in
Fordington; you might have added many details. For
instance, every morning a man used to wheel the clothing
and bed-linen of those who had died in the night out into
the mead, where the Vicar had a large copper set. Some
was boiled there, and some burnt. He also had large fires
kindled in Mill Street to carry off infection. An excellent
plan I should think.

"Many thanks, too, for the volume of poems which
duly came. "Apollo at Pherae" seems to me remarkably
well constructed in 'plot', and the verse facile: I don't
quite know how you could have acquired such readiness
at such an early date, and the influence of Milton is not
excessive at least I think not.

"I hope you will let us know when you come this way
again."

August, The Collected edition of Hardy's poems was

AET. 78-79 POETICAL QUESTIONS 195

published about this time in two volumes, the first con-
taining the shorter poems, and the second The Dynasts.

October. A curious question arose in Hardy's mind at
this date on whether a romancer was morally justified in
going to extreme lengths of assurance after the manner
of Defoe in respect of a tale he knew to be absolutely
false. Thirty-seven years earlier, when much pressed to
produce something of the nature of a fireside yarn, he
had invented a picturesque account of a stealthy noctur-
nal visit to England by Napoleon in 1804, during the war,
to spy out a good spot for invasion. Being struck with
the extreme improbability of such a story, he added a
circumstantial framework describing it as an old local
tradition to blind the reader to the hoax. When it was pub-
lished he was much surprised at people remarking to him :
" I see you have made use of that well-known tradition of
Napoleon's landing/' He then supposed that, strange as
it seemed, such a story must have been in existence with-
out his knowledge, and that perhaps the event had hap-
pened. So the matter rested till the time at which we have
arrived, when a friend who was interested made inquiries,
and was assured by historians and annalists whom he con-
sulted, that such a visit would have been fatuous, and
wellnigh impossible. Moreover, that there had never
existed any such improbable tradition. Hence arose
Hardy's aforesaid case of conscience as to being too
natural in the art he could practise so well. Had he not
long discontinued the writing of romances he would, he
said, have put at the beginning of each new one : "Under-
stand that however true this book may be in essence, in
fact it is utterly untrue."

Being interested in a dramatic case of piracy on the
high seas, which might have happened a hundred or two
hundred years before, Hardy and his wife went to the
October assizes, on the invitation of Mr. Justice Darling,
and sat through the case. Such sensational trials came to

196 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918-19

quiet Dorset whenever the port of landing was in the
county, even if they happened a thousand miles off.

On October 30 the following was written at his request :

"In reply to your letter I write for Mr. Hardy, who is
in bed with a chill,, to say that he cannot furnish you with
any biographical details. ... To your inquiry if Jude the
Obscure is autobiographical, I have to answer that there is
not a scrap of personal detail in it, it having the least to
do with his own life of all his books. The rumour, if it still
persists, was started some years ago. Speaking generally,
there is more autobiography in a hundred lines of Mr.
Hardy's poetry than in all the novels."

It is a tribute to Hardy's powers of presentation that
readers would not for many years believe that such inci-
dents as Jude's being smacked when bird-keeping, his
driving a baker's cart, his working as a journeyman ma-
son, as also many situations described in verse, were not
actual transcripts from the writer's personal experience,
although the briefest reference to biographical date-books
would have shown the impossibility of any thing of the sort.

Hardy had been asked this autumn if he would object
to a representation of some of the scenes in The Dynasts
by the Oxford University Dramatic Society in the follow-
ing year, and on his making no objection some correspond-
ence ensued with the President and Manager on certain
details.

To Mr. Maurice Colbourne.

''November n, 1919.

"Your plan for showing the out- of-doors scenes is very
ingenious and attractive and more elaborate than I
imagined, my idea having been just a backcloth coloured
greyish-blue, and a floorcloth coloured greenish-grey a
purely conventional representation for all open-air scenes.
, . . My feeling was the same as yours about the Strophe
and Antistrophe that they should be unseen, and, as it

AET. 78-79 POETICAL QUESTIONS 197

were 3 speaking from the sky. But it is, as you hint, doubtful
if the two ladies will like to have their charms hidden.
Would boys do instead, or ugly ladies with good voices ?
But I do not wish to influence largely your methods of
presentation. It will be of the greatest interest to me,
whether I can get to Oxford for the performance or not,
to see how the questions that arise in doing the thing
have been grappled with by younger brains than mine."

"November 18. To my father's grave (he was born
Nov. 1 8, 1811) with F. (Mrs. Hardy). The funeral psalm
formerly sung at the graveside to the tune of " St. Stephen "
was the xc. in Tate and Brady's version. Whether Dr.
Watts's version, beginning "O God our help in ages past"
said to be a favourite with Gladstone was written
before or after T. and B.'s (from Coverdale's prose of the
same psalm) I don't know, but I think it inferior to the
other, which contains some good and concise verse, e.g.,

T. and B, :

For in thy sight a thousand years

Are like a day that's past,
Or like a watch at dead of night

Whose hours unnumbered waste
Thou sweep'st us off as with a flood,

We vanish hence like dreams, . , .

Watts (more diffusely) :

A thousand ages in thy sight

Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night

Before the rising sun.
Time like an ever rolling stream

Bears all its sons away ;
They fly forgotten as a dream

Dies at the opening day."

In December Sir George Douglas writes concerning a
lecture he is going to give in Edinburgh on Hardy 's poems,

198 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918-19

and incidentally remarks: "Those Aeschylean poems in
The Past and the Present . - . how would Wordsworth
have regarded them, I wonder, differing so markedly as
they do from his view of Nature ?" His friend, Sir Fred-
erick Pollock, also sent a letter containing an impromptu
scene of a humorous kind : "Overheard at the sign of the
Mermaid in Elysium", purporting to be a conversation
between the shades of Shakespeare, Campion, and Heine,
"on a book newly received " (i.e. Hardy's Collected
Poems) in which Shakespeare says :

'Twas pretty wit, friend Thomas, that you spoke ;
You take the measure of my Stratford folk,

the lines referring to Hardy's poem, "To Shakespeare
after three hundred years "-

In December he opened a village war memorial in the
form of a club-room in Bockhampton. It was close to his
first school, erected, as has been told, by the manor lady
of his early affections, and here he danced, for the last
time in his life, with the then lady of the manor. The
room was erected almost on the very spot where had
stood Robert Reason's shoe-making shop when Hardy
was a boy, described in Under the Greenwood Tree as
"Mr. Robert Penny's''.

A speech made by Hardy at the opening of the Bock-
hampton Reading-room and Club on the 2nd December
1919 was not reported in any newspaper, but the follow-
ing extracts from it may be of interest :

"I feel it an honour and an honour of a very inter-
esting kind to have been asked by your President to
open this Club as a memorial to the gallant men of this
parish who fought in the last great war a parish I know
so well, and which is only about a mile from my own
door.

"This room is, it seems, to be called 'The Mellstock

78-79 MELLSTOCK CLUB-ROOM 199

Club'. I fancy I have heard the name of "Mellstock*
before. But we will let that pass. . . .

"The village of Bockhampton has had various owners.
In the time of the Conqueror it belonged to a Norman
countess ; later to a French Priory ; and in the time of
Queen Elizabeth to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, who
at the beginning of the last century sold it to Mr. Morton
Pitt, a cousin of Pitt the Premier. What a series of
scenes does this bare list of owners bring back !

"At one time Bockhampton had a water-mill. Where
was that mill, I wonder ? It had a wood. Where was that
wood?

" To come to my own recollections. From times imme-
morial the village contained several old Elizabethan
houses, with mullioned windows and doors, of Ham Hill
stone. They stood by the withy bed. I remember seeing
some of them in process of being pulled down, but some
were pulled down before I was born. To this attaches a
story. Mr. Pitt, by whose orders it was done, came to look
on, and asked one of the men several questions as to why he
was doing it in such and such a way. Mr. Pitt was notori-
ous for his shabby clothes, and the labourer, who did not
know him, said at last, 'Look here, old chap, don't you
ask so many questions, and just go on. Anybody would
think the house was yours !' Mr. Pitt obeyed orders, and
meekly went on, murmuring, 'Well, 'tis mine, after all !'

"Then there were the Poor-houses, I remember just
at the corner turning down to the dairy. These were the
homes of the parish paupers before workhouses were built.
In one of them lived an old man who was found one day
rolling on the floor, with a lot of pence and halfpence
scattered round him. They asked him what was the
matter, and he said he had heard of people rolling in
money, and he thought that for once in his life he would
do it, to see what it was like.

"Then there used to be dancing parties at Christmas,

200 LIFE'S DECLINE 1918-19

and some weeks after. This kind of party was called a
Jacob's Join, in which every guest contributed a certain
sum to pay the expenses of the entertainment it was
mostly half-a-crown in this village. They were very lively
parties I believe- The curious thing is that the man who
used to give the house-room for the dances lived in a
cottage which stood exactly where this Club house stands
now so that when you dance here you will be simply
carrying on the tradition of the spot.

"In conclusion, I have now merely to say I declare
the Mellstock Club and reading-room to be open/'

To a correspondent, on December 30, Hardy writes :
"I am sorry to say that your appeal for a poem that
should be worthy of the event of the 8th August 1918
reaches me at too late a time of life to attempt it. ...
The outline of such a poem, which you very cleverly
sketch, is striking, and ought to result at the hands of
somebody or other who may undertake it, in a literary
parallel to the Battle of Prague a piece of music which
ceased to be known long before your time, but was extraor-
dinarily popular in its day reproducing the crashing of
guns nearer and nearer, the groans of the wounded, and
the final fulfilment, with great fidelity.

"The length of the late war exhausted me of all my
impromptu poems dealing with that tragedy. ... I
quite think that one of our young poets would rise to the
occasion if you were to give him the opportunity."

This year went out quietly with Hardy, as is shown by
the brief entry : "New Year's Eve. Did not sit up.' 1

CHAPTER XVII

"THE DYNASTS" AT OXFORD; HON. DEGREE;
A DEPUTATION; A CONTROVERSY

1920: Aet. 79-80

"January 19* Coming back from Talbothays by West
Stafford Cross I saw Orion upside down in a pool of water
under an oak."

On February a Hardy was invited to receive an Honor-
ary Degree of Doctor of Letters during the time he was to
be in Oxford at the performance of The Dynasts at the
theatre, which he had promised to attend ; and on the gth
he set out by train for Oxford with Mrs. Hardy, though
the members of the O.U.D.S. had offered to send a car for
him all the way. The day was unusually fine for February,
and they were met at the station by enthusiastic repre-
sentatives of the society, driven round Oxford, and con-
ducted to the house of Sir Walter and Lady Raleigh, who
were their hosts.

The next day, after lunching with friends, they went
to the Sheldonian and the degree was received.

In presenting Hardy, the Public Orator, Mr. A. D.
Godley, made one of the most felicitous of his many
excellent speeches. He said :

"Scilicet ut Virgilio nostro sic huic quoque 'molle
atque facetum adnuerunt gaudentes rure Camenare'. Hie
est, qui divini gloriam ruris sicut nemo alius nostrorum
idylliis suis intertexuit : hie est, qui agricolarum sensus et

20 1

202 LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

colloquia ita vivide verbis effinxit ut videre nisticos con-
sessus, ut ipsos inter se sermocinantes, cum Iegimus 3
audire videamur. Obruit multos cita oblivio qui in rebus
transitoriis versantur : qui insitos animorum sensus et
naturae humanae immutabilitatem exprimit, cuius scripta
aeternam silvarum et camporum amoenitatem spirant,
hunc diu vivum per ora virum volitaturum esse prae-
dicimus. Quid quod idem in poesi quoque eo evasit ut
hoc solo scribendi genere, nisi fabularum narratio vel
magis suum aliquid et proprium habeat, immortalem
famam assequi possit ?" l

And then, after a reference to the production that
evening by the O.U.D.S. of The Dynasts "opus eius
tarn scriptoris facundia quam rerum quae tractantur
magnitudine insignitum" 2 he concluded :

"Nunc ut homini si quis alius Musis et dis agrestibus
amico titulum debitum dando, non tantum illi quantum
nobis ipsis decus addatis, duco ad vos senem illustrern
Thomam Hardy. . . ." 3

His wife, Evelyn Gifford, and her sister were present

1 "Surely as with Virgil, so with him, have the Muses that rejoice in the
countryside, approved his smoothness and elegance. This is he who has
interwoven in his (pastoral) poems, as no other has done, the (heavenly)
glory of the (heavenly) countryside : this is he who has portrayed in words
the feelings and conversations of rustics so clearly that when we read of
them we seem to picture their meetings and hear them discoursing one
with another. Speedy forgetfulness overwhelms many who treat of life's
fleeting things, but of him who unfolds the inborn feelings of man's soul
and the unchangeableness of his nature, whose writings breathe the eternal
charm of (the) woods and fields, we foretell that his living fame shall long
hover on the lips of men.

"Why now, is not the excellence of his poems such that, by this type
of writing alone, he can achieve immortal fame, even if the narration of his
stories has not something about them more peculiarly his own ?"

2 "His work marked not only by the eloquence of the author, but by the
magnitude of the events which he describes."

3 "Now that you may confer distinction, not so much on him as on our
own selves, by granting a deserved title to one who is a friend of the Muses
and pastoral gods, I present to you the revered and renowned Thomas
Hardy/'

, 'J/KWMtA i^fyest/fA aaed C

AET, 79-80 "THE DYNASTS" AT OXFORD 203

among others. Evelyn, daughter of the late Archdeacon
Gifford, was his bright and affectionate cousin by mar-
riage, whom Hardy was never to see again. Had he known
it when he was parting from her outside the Sheldonian
in the rain that afternoon, his heart would have been
heavier than it was.

In the afternoon he met the Poet-Laureate (Robert
Bridges), Mr, Masefield, and many friends at the
Raleighs', and also at the theatre in the evening, from
which they did not return till one o'clock the whole day
having been of a most romantic kind.

AN ACCOUNT OF THOMAS HARDY'S COMING TO OXFORD in
1920 to witness a performance of The Dynasts by the
Oxford University Dramatic Society, and of a later
meeting with him in Dorchester when A Desperate
Remedy was produced there : written in 1929, at Mrs.
Hardy's request, by Charles Morgan, who in 1920
was Manager for the O.U.D.S., in 1921 its President,
and afterwards dramatic critic of The Times.

When the University reassembled after the war, the
Oxford University Dramatic Society was in low water.
The tradition was broken, the surviving membership was
not more than half a dozen, and the treasury was empty.
During 1919 new members joined and life began to flicker
in the Society, but its future largely depended upon the
success or failure of the first annual play in the new series.

An undergraduate was instructed to consider, during
the long vacation of 1919, what play should be performed
and to report to the Committee. His choice was The Dy-
nasts , and he had to defend it against those who objected
that it was not Shakespearian and that Shakespeare was a
tradition of the Society : and against those more danger-
ous critics who said that The Dynasts would be costly,
and, pointing to the balance-sheet, asked whence the

20 4 LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

money would come. The financial objection was at last
overcome by personal guarantees.

The Committee endorsed the choice, and the Vice-
Chancellor, whose special consent was needed for the
performance of so modern a work, allowed it. The
arguments in its favour were, indeed, unanswerable.

The Dynasts was unique in literature, an epic-drama
without predecessor in its own kind. Its writer was a liv-
ing Englishman : its subject was closely linked with the
tragedy in which nearly all the players had lately partici-
pated : and, except for those who had seen Granville-Bark-
er's production, it would be a new theatrical experience.

One difficulty remained : the play was copyright, and
it seemed to us very probable that Hardy would refuse
permission to perform it. He is an old man, we said, and
set fast in Dorset ; he will not give a fig for what he will
call amateur theatricals, nor will he be troubled with our
affairs. It was the impression of us all that he would be
forbidding and formidable, and he was approached with
misgiving. He gave his play to us, not grudgingly nor
with any air of patronage, but with so gracious a courtesy
that we were made to feel that he was genuinely pleased
to find young men eager to perform his work. I do not
remember the text of his reply to the original request, but
I remember well the impression made by it an impres-
sion increased by his later correspondence. Long before
he came to Oxford his individuality had become estab-
lished among us. Without whittling away his legend by
any of the affectations of modesty, he had, by his gentle
plainness, banished our fear of it.

Even so, when we invited him and Mrs. Hardy to
come to Oxford to see the play, we had little hope that he
would accept, for our ideas had over-estimated his age
or, rather, under-estimated the vigour of it and his
withdrawal into Wessex was believed to be permanent.
But he said he would come, and Sir Walter Raleigh invited

AET. 79-80 "THE DYNASTS" AT OXFORD 205

him to be his guest. So soon as it was known that he
would visit Oxford, everyone perceived what hitherto few
had been able to perceive that, in withholding her high-
est honour from the author of The Dynasts and The Re-
turn of the Native (perhaps, whispered Cambridge and the
world, because he was also the author of Jude the Qb-
scure\ Christminster was making herself ridiculous. A
D.C.L. was offered him. Authority must have sighed
with relief when he did not refuse.

It fell to me to meet him at the station. I give my im-
pression of him then and afterwards, not because it is of
value as being mine, but for two reasons first, that Mrs.
Hardy has asked it ; secondly, that I should dearly love to
see some great writer of the past as a contemporary under-
graduate saw him. In days to come, even so slight a record
as this may have an interest that it cannot now possess.

Hardy made it easy for a young man to be his host
made it easy, not by any loose affability of manner or by
a parade of that heartiness which, in too many celebrated
men, is a form of patronage, but simply by making no
attempt whatever to impress or to startle me. I had not
expected cleverness or volubility in him ; and his speech
was, at first, slight and pleasantly conventional. He intro-
duced me to Mrs. Hardy, asked how long the drive would
be to Sir Walter's, used, in brief, the small talk of en-
counter, giving me time to become accustomed to his
presence and to break free of the thought : I must remem-
ber this ; I shall remember and tell of it when I am an old
man. He himself seemed to me prodigiously old, not
because there was any failure in his powers he was, on
the contrary, sprightly, alert, bird-like but because his
head had an appearance of being much older than his
body, his neck having the thinness and his brow the tight-
ness of great age, and his eyes so old that age itself
seemed to have swung full circle within them being the
eyes of some still young man who had been keeping watch

206 LIFE'S DECLINE I920

at sea since the beginning of time. I remember that, sit-
ting opposite him in the cab, I began to think of the sea
and to imagine his head appearing above the bridge-lad-
der of a warship. Then I thought of a bird again, a small
bird with a great head. And I made another discovery
that pleased me : in external things he was deeply old-
fashioned, and, fearing perhaps some assertive, new-
fangled conduct in an undergraduate, timid and a little
suspicious. I knew at once that I had nothing to fear from an
old gentleman who by no means wished to pretend that
he was young, and would never embarrass me by forsak-
ing those little formalities of ordinary behaviour to which
I myself had been trained.

Thus, because he made no attempt to break it, the ice
melted easily and naturally. He asked of the play, saying
that it had not been intended for the stage and that he
wondered at our having chosen it.

Then, breaking off from this and reminded, I think,
by Mrs. Hardy, he said : "We thought we should like to
make a little tour of Oxford before going out to the
Raleighs '. I don 't know it well as it is to-day, and Mrs.
Hardy knows it less/' He knew it, however, well enough
to have planned a route with precision. We drove slowly,
stopping now and then when he commanded it, and of
each place he spoke in a different tone as if some mood
were connected with it. Jz^was, of course, the inevitable
thought of one who had read that book in a midshipman's
hammock when to him also Oxford was a beckoning
dream. It seemed very strange to be driving solemnly
down the High and up the Broad with the author of
Jude. It seemed strange because, after all, it was so
natural. Here was an old man taking a normal and rea-
sonable interest in the place where he was quietly "see-
ing the sights " in the fashion of his own time and without
the self-consciousness of ours.

But when we are undergraduates we expect writers to

"THE DYNASTS " AT OXFORD 207

be literary men in all things ; we cannot easily dissociate
them from their works ; and it seemed to me very odd
that Thomas Hardy should bother about the Martyrs 7
Memorial.

When the tour was over, we went forward towards our
destination. Hardy began to ask me about the age of
undergraduates, and what effect the war had had upon us.
I told him that my own war service delivered me from one
examination and from compulsory chapels. " Compulsory
chapels . . ." said Hardy, and no more ; then, opening a
little case on the seat beside him and producing from it a
handful of small volumes, he asked me if I knew what
they were. "Poems", he said, "written by young men.
They very kindly send them to me/ 1 Very kindly was
there irony in that ? But Hardy, reading my thought, dis-
missed it. He left no doubt that he was glad to have these
volumes sent to him, seeing in them a tribute to himself as
a poet, not a novelist and he cared deeply for that. And
from this there came to me an opportunity to ask a ques-
tion that I had been afraid to ask : whether he would ever
write another tale ?" "No", he answered, "I gave it up
long ago. I wanted to write poetry in the beginning ; now
I can. Besides, it is so long since I wrote a novel that
novel readers must have forgotten me." And, when I had
said something, he added: "No. Much depends on the
public expectation. If I wrote a story now, they would
want it to be what the old ones were. Besides, my stories

are written."

I have no recollection of any conversation after that,
nor any picture of Hardy in my mind until, going to
Dorchester in 1922 to see the Hardy Players perform a
dramatization of Desperate Remedies, I was invited by
him to Max Gate, where we sat round the fire after tea
and he told me of his early days in London, and how he
would go to Shakespearian plays with the text in his
hands and, seated in the front row, follow the dialogue by

ao8 LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

the stage light. He told me, too, that he had written a
stage version of Tess, and something of its early history ;
how, after the success of the novel, the great ones of the
earth had pressed him to dramatize it ; how he had done
so, and the play had been prepared for the stage ; by what
mischance the performance of it had been prevented.
Where was it now ?

In a drawer. Would he allow it to be performed ? He
smiled, gave no answer, and began at once to talk of criti-
cism first of dramatic criticism which, he said, in the few
newspapers that took it seriously was better than literary
criticism, the dramatic critics having less time "to re-
hearse their prejudices"; then of literary criticism itself
a subject on which he spoke with a bitterness that sur-
prised me. The origin of this bitterness was in tlie past
where, I believe, there was indeed good reason for it, but
it was directed now against contemporary critics of his
own work, and I could not understand what general
reason he had to complain of them. He used no names ;
he spoke with studied reserve, sadly rather than queru-
lously; but he was persuaded and there is evidence of this
persuasion in the preface to the posthumous volume of his
verse that critics approached his work with an ignorant
prejudice against his "pessimism" which they allowed to
stand in the way of fair reading and fair judgement.

This was a distortion of facts as I knew them. It was
hard to believe that Hardy honestly thought that his
genius was not recognized; harder to believe that he
thought his work was not read. Such a belief indicated
the only failure of balance, the only refusal to seek the
truth, which I perceived in Hardy, and I was glad when
the coming of a visitor, who was, I think, secretary of the
Society of Dorset Men, led him away from criticism to
plainer subjects. When the time came for me to go, seeing
that he proposed to come out with me, I tried to restrain
him, for the night was cold ; but he was determined, and

AET. 79-80 "THE DYNASTS" AT OXFORD 209

Mrs. Hardy followed her own wise course of matching her
judgement with his vitality. So he came down among the
trees to the dark road, and I saw the last of him standing
outside his gate with a lantern swaying in his hand. I
shall not know a greater man, not have I ever known one
who had, in the same degree. Hardy's power of drawing
reverence towards affection.

He was not simple ; he had the formal subtlety peculiar
to his own generation ; there was something deliberately
"ordinary " in his demeanour which was a concealment of
extraordinary fires a method of self-protection common
enough in my grandfather's generation, though rare now.

There are many who might have thought him unim-
pressive because he was content to be serious and deter-
mined to be unspectacular. But his was the kind of
character to which I lay open. He was an artist, proud of
his art, who yet made no parade of it ; he was a tradition-
alist and, therefore, suspicious of fashion ; he had that sort
of melancholy, the absence of which in any man has always
seemed to me to be a proclamation of blindness.

There was in him something timid as well as some-
thing fierce, as if the world had hurt him and he expected
it to hurt him again. But what fascinated me above all
was the contrast between the plainness, the quiet rigidity
of his behaviour, and the passionate boldness of his mind,
for this I had always believed to be the tradition of
English genius, too often and too extravagantly denied.

To Mr. Joseph McCabe, who wrote proposing to include
Hardy in a Biographical Dictionary of Modern

Rationalists.

"February 18, 1920.

"DEAR SIR,

"As Mr. Hardy has a cold which makes writing trying
to his eyes, I answer your letter for him. He says he
thinks he is rather an irrationalist than a rationalist, on

LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

account of his inconsistencies. He has, in fact, declared
as much in prefaces to some of his poems, where he ex-
plains his views as being mere impressions that frequently
change. Moreover, he thinks he could show that no man
is a rationalist, and that human actions are not ruled by
reason at all in the last resort. But this, of course, is out-
side the question. So that he cannot honestly claim to
belong to the honourable body you are including in your
dictionary, whom he admires for their straightforward
sincerity and permanent convictions, though he does not
quite think they can claim their title.

"Yours very truly,

"F.E. HARDY."

On March 7, 1920, Hardy writes to an old friend of
nearly fifty years' standing, Mr. John Slater, F.R.LB.A. :

"... As to your question whether I should like to be
nominated as an Hon. Fellow of the R.I.B.A., I really
don't know what to say. Age has naturally made me, like
Gallic, care for none of these things at any rate very
much, especially as I am hardly ever in London. But at
the same time I am very conscious of the honour of such
a proposition, and like to be reminded in such a way that
I once knew what a T square was. So, shall I leave the
decision to your judgement ?"

Hardy was duly nominated and elected, and it was
a matter of regret to him that he could not attend the
meetings of the Institute, held still in the same old room
in Conduit Street in which he had received the prize
medal for his essay in 1863 from the hands of Sir Gilbert
Scott. Mr. John Slater was almost the only surviving
friend of Hardy's architectural years in London since the
death of Arthur Blomfield.

"March 25. Joined National Committee for acquir-
ing Wentworth Place the house once occupied by John
Keats."

AET. 79-80 "THE DYNASTS " AT OXFORD 211

"April 7. A would-be author, not without humour,
writing from South Africa for a foreword' from me, adds :
'Mr. Balfour when writing asked me not to use his re-
marks, mentioning the number of books sent him from all
parts of the world (for forewords). But mental dexterity
greatly inferior to yours, Sir, could contrive to do somewhat,
and yet avoid the consequences contemplated ' i.e. multi-
tudes of other would-be novelists asking the same favour/*

"April 21. Went with F. to St. Margaret's, West-
minster, to the wedding of Harold Macmillan and Lady
Dorothy Cavendish. Sat with Lord Morley, and signed
as one of the witnesses. Morley, seeing Bryce close by us,
and the Duke of Devonshire near, whispered to F.,
Which weigh most, three O.M.'s or one Duke ?"

This was Hardy's last visit to London. He, with his
wife, stayed for two nights only at J. M. Barriers flat, so
near the house in Adelphi Terrace where he had worked
as an architect's assistant nearly sixty years before.

"May 14. Motored with F. and K. to Exeter. Called
on the Granville-Barkers at Sidmouth. Cathedral serv-
ice: the beautiful anthem, 'God is gone up* (Croft).
Well sung. Psalms to Walker in E flat. Felt I should pre-
fer to be a cathedral organist to anything in the world.
'Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
claiming each slave of the sound/ A fine May day."

At the end of May a letter came from C. W. Moule in
reply to Hardy's note of sympathy on his loss of his only
remaining brother, Handley, the Bishop of Durham,
with whom Hardy had had occasion to correspond the
year before. As it was the last letter Hardy received from
his correspondent, who himself passed away within the
next year, the following passages are quoted :

"In condolence 'the half is more than the whole*, as
the wise Greek paradox saith (irX&p q/xurv 7raj>ro$). . . .
Your friendly acceptance of those stanzas was answered
by me, but that in which you told me that dear Horace

LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

was one of 'The Five Students' in Moments of Vision I
fear was never answered. ... I did not know of Hand-
ley's nearness in age to your sister Mary (they were only
two days apart), nor did I know that your mother and
mine knew each other well enough to compare notes on
the point. ... I am glad you saw him at Max Gate.
We wish that we could see you here. I may try to send
you some book in memoriam H. C. G. M. . . . * Not one
is there among us that understandeth any more', as a
snapshot of the current generation, is worthy of you."
(Hardy had quoted the words from the 74th Psalm in the
letter to which this was an answer, alluding probably to
the memories familiar to all three.)

On June 2nd of this year came Hardy's eightieth
birthday, and he received a deputation from the Society
of Authors, consisting of Mr. Augustine Birrell, Sir
Anthony Hope Hawkins, and Mr. John Galsworthy. The
occasion was a pleasant one, and the lunch lively. Many
messages were received during the day, including one
from the King, the Lord Mayor of London, the Cam-
bridge Vice-Chancellor, and the Prime Minister,

Hardy pencilled down the following as "Birthday
notes";

"When, like the Psalmist, 'I call mine own ways to
remembrance', I find nothing in them that quite justifies
this celebration.

"The value of old age depends upon the person who
reaches it. To some men of early performance it is use-
less. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables
them to complete their job,

"We have visited two cathedrals during the last
month, and I could not help feeling that if men could get
a little more of the reposefulness and peace of those build-
ings into their lives how much better it would be for them.

"Nature's indifference to the advance of her species
along what we are accustomed to call civilized lines makes

AET. 79-80 A DEPUTATION 213

the late war of no importance to her, except as a sort of
geological fault in her continuity.

"Though my life, like the lives of my contemporaries,
covers a period of more material advance in the world
than any of the same length can have done in other cen-
turies, I do not find that real civilization has advanced
equally. People are not more humane, so far as I can see,
than they were in the year of my birth. Disinterested
kindness is less. The spontaneous goodwill that used to
characterize manual workers seems to have departed.
One day of late a railway-porter said to a feeble old lady,
a friend of ours, 'See to your luggage yourself. Human
nature had not sunk so low as that in 1 840.

"If, as has been lately asserted, tmly the young and
feeble League of Nations stands between us and the utter
destruction of Civilization, it makes one feel he would
rather be old than young. For a person whose chief inter-
est in life has been the literary art poetry in particular
the thought is depressing that, should such an over-
turn arrive, poetry will be the first thing to go, probably
not to revive again for many centuries. Anyhow, it be-
hoves young poets and other writers to endeavour to
stave off such a catastrophe."

Among others who remembered his birthday, Mr.
John Lane sent a glass goblet which had come into
his possession many years before, remarking, ... "no
doubt it was intended as a gift for you from some fair but
probably shy admirer" ; to which Hardy replied :

"Alas, for the mysterious goblet inscribed to the mys-
terious namesake of mine. He must, or may, have been a
jocky from the diagrams. . . . Anyhow, no woman ever
took the trouble to inscribe her love forme on a cup of crys-
tal of that you may be sure ; and it is best on the whole
to leave the history of the glass in vague uncertainty."

The next week J. M. Barrie came to Max Gate on a
visit, and in July Hardy and his wife were motoring about

2i 4 LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

Dorset, showing some features of the country to their
friend, Mrs. Arthur Henniker, who was staying at Wey-
mouth, and at that time had ideas of buying a house in
the neighbourhood. He was also engaged in further cor-
respondence on the scheme of establishing a South-west-
ern University at Exeter,

To Mr. G. Herbert Thring.

"August 23, 1920.

"The address from the Members of the Council,
representing the Society of Authors all, has reached me
safely, and though I knew its contents its spiritual part
on my actual birthday when the deputation came here,
I did not realize its bodily beauty till now.

"As to the address itself, I can only confirm by this
letter what I told the deputation by word of mouth
how much I have been moved by such a mark of good
feeling affection as I may truly call it in the body of
writers whose President I have had the distinction of
being for many years a do-nothing President, a roi-
fainSanty I very greatly fear, in spite of their assurances !
However, the Society has been good enough to take me as
worth this tribute, and I thank them heartily for it and
what it expresses. It will be a cheering reminder of bright
things whenever I see it or think of it, which will be often
and often."

" September 6. Death of Evelyn Gifford, at Arlington
House, Oxford. Dear Evelyn ! whom I last parted from in
apparently perfect health." She was the daughter of Dr.
Gifford who married Margaret Jeune, and the poem,
" Evelyn G. of Christminster ", was written on this occasion.

"November 1 1. Hardy's poem, "And there was a great
calm", appeared in The Times Armistice Supplement.

The request to write this poem had been brought to
him from London by one of the editorial staff. At first

AET. 79-80 A CONTROVERSY 215

Hardy was disinclined, and all but refused, being gener-
ally unable to write to order. In the middle of the night,
however, an idea seized him, and he was heard moving
about the house looking things up* The poem was duly
written and proved worthy of the occasion.

On the 1 3th the Dorchester Amateurs performed The
Return of the Native in Dorchester, as dramatized by Mr.
Tilley.

"More interested than I expected to be. The dancing
was just as it used to be at Higher Bockhampton in my
childhood."-

In declining to become a Vice-President of a well-
known Society Hardy writes :

"I may be allowed to congratulate its members upon
their wise insistence on the word 'English' as the name of
this country's people, and in not giving way to a few
short-sighted clamourers for the vague, unhistoric and
pinchbeck title of 'British* by which they would fain see
it supplanted."

Towards the end of the year Hardy was occupied with
the following interesting correspondence :

To Mr. Alfred Noyes.

"DORCHESTER, ijfh December 1920.
"DEAR MR. NOYES,

"Somebody has sent me an article from the Morning
Post of December 9 entitled c Poetry and Religion*, which
reports you as saying, in a lecture, that mine is a c phi-
losophy which told them (readers) that the Power behind
the Universe was an imbecile jester'.

"As I hold no such * philosophy*, and, to the best of
my recollection, never could have done so, I should be
glad if you would inform me whereabouts I have seriously
asserted such to be my opinion.

"Yours truly,

"Tfe. HARDY**

216 LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

It should be stated that Mr. Noyes had always been a
friendly critic of Hardy's writings, and one with whom he
was on good terms, which was probably Hardy's reason
for writing to him, who would be aware there was no
personal antagonism in his letter.

Mr. Noyes replied that he was sorry the abbreviated
report of his address did not contain the tribute he had
paid Hardy as a writer with artistic mastery and at the
head of living authors, although he did disagree with his
pessimistic philosophy; a philosophy which, in his opinion,
led logically to the conclusion that the Power behind the
Universe was malign ; and he referred to various passages
in Hardy's poems that seemed to bear out his belief that
their writer held the views attributed to him in the lec-
ture ; offering, however, to revise it when reprinted, if he
had misinterpreted the aforesaid passages.

To Mr. Alfred Noyes.

"December ip/A, 1920.

"I am much obliged for your reply, which I really
ought not to have troubled you to write. I may say for
myself that I very seldom do give critics such trouble,
usually letting things drift, though there have been many
occasions when a writer who has been so much abused for
his opinions as I have been would perhaps have done
well not to hold his peace.

"I do not know that there can be much use in my say-
ing more than I did say. It seems strange that I should
have to remind a man of letters of what, I should have
supposed, he would have known as well as I of the very
elementary rule of criticism that a writer's works should
be judged as a whole, and not from picked passages that
contradict them as a whole and this especially when
they are scattered over a period of fifty years.

"*AIso -that I should have to remind him of the vast

. 79-80 A CONTROVERSY 217

difference between the expression of fancy and the ex-
pression of belief. My imagination may have often run
away with me ; but all the same, my sober opinion so far
as I have any definite one of the Cause of Things, has
been defined in scores of places, and is that of a great
many ordinary thinkers : that the said Cause is neither
moral nor immoral, but unmoral : ' loveless and hateless'
I have called it, * which neither good nor evil knows'
etc., etc. (you will find plenty of these definitions in The
Dynasts as well as in short poems, and I am surprised that
you have not taken them in). This view is quite in keep-
ing with what you call a Pessimistic philosophy (a mere
nickname with no sense in it), which I am quite unable to
see as 'leading logically to the conclusion that the Power
behind the universe is malign'.

"In my fancies, or poems of the imagination, I have
of course called this Power all sorts of names never sup-
posing they would be taken for more than fancies. I have
even in prefaces warned readers to take them as such as
mere impressions of the moment, exclamations in fact.
But it has always been my misfortune to presuppose a too
intelligent reading public, and no doubt people will go on
thinking that I really believe the Prime Mover to be a
malignant old gentleman, a sort of King of Dahomey
an idea which, so far from my holding it, is to me irre-
sistibly comic. 'What a fool one must have been to write
for such a public !' is the inevitable reflection at the end
of one's life.

"The lines you allude to, "A Young Man's Epigram'
dated 1866, 1 remember finding in a drawer, and printed
them merely as an amusing instance of early cynicism.
The words 'Time's Laughingstocks' are legitimate imagery
all of a piece with such expressions as 'Life, Time's fool',
and thousands in poetry and I am amazed that you should
see any belief in them. The other verses you mention,
'New Year's Eve', 'His Education', are the same fanciful

2i 8 LIFE'S DECLINE

I92O

impressions of the moment. The poem called 'He ab-
jures Love ', ending with 'And then the curtain', is a
love-poem, and lovers are chartered irresponsibles. A
poem often quoted against me, and apparently in your
mind in the lecture, is the one called * Nature's Question-
ing', containing the words, 'some Vast Imbecility', etc.
as if these definitions were my creed. But they are merely
enumerated in the poem as fanciful alternatives to several
others, having nothing to do with my own opinion. As
for 'The Unborn*, to which you allude, though the form
of it is imaginary, the sentiment is one which I should
think, especially since the war, is not uncommon or un-
reasonable.

"This week I have had sent me a review which quotes
a poem entitled 'To my Father's Violin', containing a
Virgilian reminiscence of mine of Acheron and the Shades.
The writer comments: 'Truly this pessimism is insup-
portable. . . . One marvels that Hardy is not in a mad-
house'. Such is English criticism, and I repeat, why did
I ever write a line ! And perhaps if the young ladies to
whom you lectured really knew that, so far from being
the wicked personage they doubtless think me at present
to be, I am a harmless old character much like their own
grandfathers, they would consider me far less romantic
and attractive."

Mr. Noyes in a further interesting letter, after re-
assuring Hardy that he would correct any errors, gave his
own views, one of which was that he had "never been
able to conceive a Cause of Things that could be less in
any respect than the things caused ". To which Hardy
replied :

" Many thanks for your letter. The Scheme of Things
is, indeed, incomprehensible; and there I suppose we
must leave it perhaps for the best. Knowledge might
be terrible.-

AET. 79-80 A CONTROVERSY 219

To "The New York World".

"December 0,3, 1920.

"Yes I approve of international disarmament, on the
lines indicated by the New York World"

The following letter, written to someone about De-
cember 1920, obviously refers to his correspondence with
Mr. Noyes :

"A friend of mine writes objecting to what he calls
my 'philosophy' (though I have no philosophy merely
what I have often explained to be only a confused heap of
impressions, like those of a bewildered child at a conjur-
ing show). He says he has never been able to conceive a
Cause of Things that could be less in any respect than the
thing caused. This apparent impossibility to him, and to
so many, is very likely owing to his running his head
against a Single Cause, and perceiving no possible other.
But if he would discern that what we call the first Cause
should be called First Causes, his difficulty would be
lessened. Assume a thousand unconscious causes
lumped together in poetry as one Cause, or God and
bear in mind that a coloured liquid can be produced by
the mixture of colourless ones, a noise by the juxtaposi-
tion of silences, etc., etc., and you see that the assumption
that intelligent beings arise from the combined action
of unintelligent forces is sufficiently probable for imagi-
native writing, and I have never attempted scientific. It
is my misfortune that people will treat all my mood-
dictated writing as a single scientific theory."

About Christmas the song entitled "When I set out
for Lyonnesse" was published as set to music by Mr.
Charles A. Speyer. It was one of his own poems that
Hardy happened to like, and he was agreeably surprised
that it should be liked by anybody else, his experience

a2o LIFE'S DECLINE 1920

being that an author's preference for particular verses of
his own was usually based on the circumstances that gave
rise to them, and not on their success as art.

On Christmas night the carol singers and mummers
came to Max Gate as they had promised., the latter per-
forming the Play of Saint George, just as he had seen it
performed in his childhood* On the last day of the old
year a poem by Hardy called "At the Entering of the
New Year" appeared in the Athenaeum.

CHAPTER XVIII
SOME FAREWELLS
1921-1925: Act. 80-85

THE New Year found Hardy sitting up to hear the bells,
which he had not done for some time.

Early in January he was searching through registers of
Stinsford for records of a family named Knight, con-
nected with his own. Many generations of this family
are buried in nameless graves in Stinsford Churchyard.

J. M. Barrie paid him a brief visit on May 1 i, staying
at Max Gate for one night, and visiting Hardy's birth-
place at Bockhampton on the morning of May 12. The
same day Hardy learned of the death of a friend, an elder
brother of the confidant and guide of his youth and early
manhood. In his note-book he writes :

"May n. Charles Moule died. He is the last of * the
seven brethren'/'

On June 2 he notes that his birthday was remembered
by the newspapers, and that he received an address from
younger writers. Accompanying this was a fine copy of the
first edition of "Lamia", "Isabella", "The Eve of St.
Agnes", and other poems by John Keats, in the original
boards with the half-title and eight pages of advertise-
ments.

The idea had originated with Mr. St. John Ervine,
who summoned a committee to consider the nature of the
tribute. The address was signed by a hundred and six
younger writers, and ran as follows :

222 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

"DEAR MR. HARDY,

"We, who are your younger comrades in the craft of
letters, wish on this your eighty-first birthday to do hon-
our to ourselves by praising your work, and to thank you
for the example of high endeavour and achievement
which you have set before us. In your novels and poems
you have given us a tragic vision of life which is informed
by your knowledge of character and relieved by the char-
ity of your humour, and sweetened by your sympathy
with human suffering and endurance* We have learned
from you that the proud heart can subdue the hardest fate,
even in submitting to it. ... In all that you have writ-
ten you have shown the spirit of man, nourished by tradi-
tion and sustained by pride, persisting through defeat.

"You have inspired us both by your work and by the
manner in which it was done. The craftsman in you calls
for our admiration as surely as the artist, and few writers
have observed so closely as you have the Host's instruc-
tion in the Canterbury Tales:

"Your tarmes, your colours, and your figures,
Keep them in store, till so be ye indite
High style, as when that men to kinges write*

"From your first book to your last, you have written
in the 'high style, as when the men to kinges write', and
you have crowned a great prose with a noble poetry.

"We thank you, Sir, for all that you have written . . .
but most of all, perhaps, for The Dynasts.

"We beg that you will accept the copy of the first
edition of Lamia by John Keats which accompanies this
letter, and with it, accept also our grateful homage."

A few days later, on June 9, he motored to Stur-
minster Newton with his wife and Mr. Cecil Hanbury to
see a performance of The Mellstock Quire by the Hardy
Players in the Castle ruins. Afterwards he went to River-

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 223

side, the house where he had written The Return of the
Native^ and where the Players were then having tea.

On June 16 Mr. de la Mare arrived for a visit of two
nights. The following day he walked to Stinsford with
Hardy and was much interested in hearing about the
various graves, and in reading a poem that Hardy had just
lately written, "Voices from Things growing in a Country
Churchyard". The first verse of the poem runs thus :

These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,

Sir or Madam,
A little girl here sepultured.
Once I flit-fluttered like a bird
Above the grass, as now I wave
In daisy shapes above my grave,

All day cheerily,

All night eerily !

Fanny Kurd's real name was Fanny Hurden, and
Hardy remembered her as a delicate child who went to
school with him. She died when she was about eighteen,
and her grave and a head-stone with her name are to be
seen in Stinsford Churchyard. The others mentioned in
this poem were known to him by name and repute.

Early in July a company of film actors arrived in Dor-
chester for the purpose of preparing a film of The Mayor of
Casterbridge. Hardy met them outside The King's Arms,
the hotel associated with the novel. Although the actors
had their faces coloured yellow and were dressed in the
fashion of some eighty years earlier, Hardy observed, to
his surprise, that the townsfolk passed by on their ordi-
nary affairs and seemed not to notice the strange spectacle,
nor did any interest seem aroused when Hardy drove
through the town with the actors to Maiden Castle, that
ancient earthwork which formed the background to one
part of the film.

About this time he went to St. Peter's Church, to a

224 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

morning service, for the purpose of hearing sung by the
choir the morning hymn, "Awake my Soul", to Barthe-
lemon's setting. This had been arranged for him by Dr.
Niven, the Rector of St. Peter's. Church music, as has
been shown, had appealed strongly to Hardy from his
earliest years. On July 23 a sonnet, "Barthelemon at
Vauxhall", appeared in The Times. He had often
imagined the weary musician, returning from his nightly
occupation of making music for a riotous throng, lingering
on Westminster Bridge to see the rising sun and being
thence inspired to the composition of music to be heard
hereafter in places very different from Vauxhall.

In the same month he opened a bazaar in aid of the
Dorset County Hospital, and in the evening of that day
he was driven into Dorchester again to see some dancing
in the Borough Gardens. Of this he writes :

"Saw 'The Lancers' danced (for probably the last
time) at my request. Home at 10 : outside our gate full
moon over cottage : band still heard playing/*

At the beginning of September Hardy stood sponsor
at the christening of the infant daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
Cecil Hanbury of Kingston Maurward. His gift to his
little godchild was the manuscript of a short poem con-
tained in a silver box. This appeared afterwards in
Human Shows under the title "To C.F.H.".

Three days later he was again at Stinsford Church,
attending the evening service. In his notebook he re-
cords : "A beautiful evening. Evening Hymn Tallis."

During the latter half of September Hardy was sitting
to his friend, Mr. Ouless, for his portrait, which now
hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. On October 14
he received a visit from Mr. and Mrs. John Masefield,
who brought with them a gift : a full-rigged ship made by
John Masefield himself. This ship had been named by its
maker The Triumph, and was much valued by Hardy,

}

k&*A.

^/Vi*<. ^

V

A. Af^T-

Facsimile reproduction from page of original MS. of &;/# Lyrics and Earlier.

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 225

who showed it with pride to callers at Max Gate, with the
story of how it arrived. Four days later Hardy writes :
"October 1 8. In afternoon to Stinsford with F. A
matchless October : sunshine., mist and turning leaves."

The first month of 1922 found him writing an ener-
getic preface to a volume of poems entitled Late Lyrics
and Earlier y the MS. of which he forwarded to the pub-
lishers on January 23. Some of his friends regretted this
preface, thinking that it betrayed an oversensitiveness to
criticism which it were better the world should not know*
But sensitiveness was one of Hardy's chief characteristics,
and without it his poems would never have been written,
nor indeed, the greatest of his novels. He used to say that
it was not so much the force of the blow that counted, as
the nature of the material that received the blow.

An interesting point in this preface was his attitude
towards religion. Through the years 1920 to 1925 Hardy
was interested in conjectures on rationalizing the English
Church. There had been rumours for some years of a
revised Liturgy, and his hopes were accordingly raised by
the thought of making the Established Church compre-
hensive enough to include the majority of thinkers of the
previous hundred years who had lost all belief in the
supernatural.

When the new Prayer Book appeared, however, his
hopes were doomed to disappointment, and he found that
the revision had not been in a rationalistic direction, and
from that time he lost all expectation of seeing the
Church representative of modern thinking minds.

In April J. M. Barrie stayed at Max Gate for one
night. The 2jrd May saw the publication of Late Lyrics
and Earlier^ and on the following day Hardy motored to
Sturminster Newton to call at the house where he had
spent some of the early years of his first marriage, and

226 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

where he wrote The Return of the Native. Two days later
he notes: "Visited Stinsford and Higher Bockhampton.
House at the latter shabby, and garden. Just went
through into heath, and up plantation to top of garden/'
It was becoming increasingly painful to Hardy to visit
this old home of his, and often when he left he said that
he would go there no more.

On May 29 he copied some old notes made before
he had contemplated writing The Dynasts.

"We the people Humanity, a collective personality
(Thus Ve' could be engaged in the battle of Hohenlin-
den, say, and in the battle of Waterloo) dwell with genial
humour on f our j getting into a rage for we knew not what.

"The intelligence of this collective personality
Humanity is pervasive, ubiquitous, like that of God.
Hence e.g. on the one hand we could hear the roar of the
cannon, discern the rush of the battalions, on the other
hear the voice of a man protesting, etc.

" Title * self-slaughter ' ; ' divided against ourselves '.

"Now these 3 (or 3000) whirling through space at the
rate of 40 miles a second (God's view). 'Some of our
family who" (the we of one nation speaking of the c we*
of another).

"A battle. Army as somnambulists not knowing
what it is for.

"We were called 'Artillery* etc. *We were so under
the spell of habit that 1 (drill).

"It is now necessary to call the reader's attention to
those of us who were harnessed and collared in blue and
brass. . . .

"Poem the difference between what things are and
what they ought to be. (Stated as by a god to the gods
i.e. as God's story.)

"Poem I First Cause, omniscient, not omnipotent
limitations, difficulties, etc., from being only able to
work by Law (His only failing is lack of foresight).

AET. 8o~8 5 SOME FAREWELLS 227

"We will now ask the reader to look eastward with
us ... at what the contingent of us out that way were
doing.

"Poem. A spectral force seen acting in a man (e.g.
Napoleon) and he acting under it a pathetic sight this
compulsion.

"Patriotism, if aggressive and at the expense of other
countries, is a vice ; if in sympathy with them, a vlrtue."

From these notes it will be seen how The Dynasts had
been slowly developing in his mind. Unfortunately they
are not dated, but there is in existence a notebook filled
with details of the Napoleonic wars, and reflection upon
them, having been written at the time he was gathering
material for The Trumpet-Major^ which was first pub-
lished in 1880.

During July Hardy had visits from many friends.
Florence Henniker came early in the month, and went for
a delightful drive with him and his wife in Blackmore
Vale, and to Sherborne, the scene of The Woodlanders.
Later Siegfried Sassoon arrived with Edmund Blunden,
and then E. M. Forster, who accompanied him to an
amateur performance of A Midsummer Nigh? f s Dream on
the lawn of Trinity Rectory.

In August he was well enough to cycle (no small feat
for a man of eighty-two) with his wife to Talbothays to
visit his brother and his sister.

On August 1 1 he writes in his notebook :

"Motored to Sturminster Newton, and back by Dog-
bury Gate. Walked to top of High Stoy with Flower
(probably for the last time), thence back home. A beauti-
ful drive."

"October 12. Walked across Boucher's Close to Ewe-
lease Stile." (Boucher's Close is a green-wooded meadow
next to Stinsford Vicarage, and the Ewelease Stile is the
one whereon, more than fifty years before this date, he

228 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

had sat and read the review of Desperate Remedies in The
Spectator.}

On the same day Hardy wrote to J. H. Morgan as follows :

"DEAR GENERAL MORGAN,

" I had already begun a reply to your interesting letter
from Berlin, which opened up so many points that had
engaged me 20 years ago, but had rather faded in my
memory. Now that you are at home I will write it in a
more succinct form, for it is not likely that amid the many
details you have to attend to after your absence you will
want to think much about Napoleonic times.

"I cannot for my life recall where I obtained the idea
of N's entry into Berlin by the Potsdamer-strasse, though
I don't think I should have written it without authority.
However, you have to remember that the events gener-
ally in The Dynasts had to be pulled together into dra-
matic scenes, to show themselves to the mental eye of the
reader as a picture viewed from one point ; and hence it
was sometimes necessary to see round corners, down
crooked streets, and to shift buildings nearer each other
than in reality (as Turner did in his landscapes) ; and it
may possibly happen that I gave *A Public Place* in
Berlin these convenient facilities without much ceremony.

"You allude to Leipzig. That battle bothered me
much more than Jena or Ulm (to which you also allude)
in fact more than any other battle I had to handle. I
defy any human being to synchronize with any certainty
its episodes from descriptions by historians. My time-
table was, I believe, as probable a one as can be drawn up
at this date. But I will go no further with these stale con-
jectures, now you are in London.

"I have quite recently been reading a yellow old
letter written from Berlin in June, 1815, by a Dorset man
whose daughter is a friend of ours, and who lately sent it
to me. The writer says what is oddly in keeping with your

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 229

remarks on the annoyance of Prussian officers. * Buona-
parte has rendered Germany completely military; at the
inns and post-houses a private Gentleman exacts not half
the respect exacted by a soldier. This contempt for those
who wear no swords displays itself in no very pleasant
shape to travellers. About 3 weeks ago I might have died
of damp sheets if my German servant had not taken upon
him to assure a brute of a Post-master that I was an
English General travelling for my health. ... I have
since girded on a sabre, got a military cap, and let my
moustache grow : soldiers now present arms as we pass.'

"It would be strange to find that Napoleon was really
the prime cause of German militarism ! What a Nemesis
for the French nation !

"Well, I have gone back to Boney again after all:
but no more of him. I hope you find the change to
London agreeable, and keep well in your vicissitudes.

"Sincerely yours,

"THOMAS HARDY."

Early in November he was visited by Mrs. Henry
Allhusen, his friend from her girlhood, when she was Miss
Dorothy Stanley, daughter of Lady Jeune, afterwards
Lady St. Helier. With Mrs. Allhusen and her daughter
Elizabeth he motored to Dogbury Gate and other beauti-
ful parts of Dorset. Elizabeth Allhusen^ a charming girl,
died soon after, to Hardy's grief.

A few days later came a letter from the Pro-Provost of
Queen's College, Oxford, to say that it had been decided
to elect him to an Honorary Fellowship, which he ac-
cepted, an announcement to that effect being made in
The Times on the 2oth of the month.

Another entry in his notebook :

"November 27. E's death-day, ten years ago. Went
with F. and tidied her tomb and carried flowers for her
and the other two tombs.-*

230 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

"New Year's Eve. Henry and Kate came to I o'clock
dinner, stayed to tea, left 5.30. Did not sit up."

Early in January 1923 Hardy was appointed Governor
of the Dorchester Grammar School for three years.

"February 26. A story (rather than a poem) might be
written in the first person, in which *I* am supposed to
live through the centuries in my ancestors, in one person,
the particular line of descent chosen being that in which
qualities are most continuous/' (From an old note.)

A few days after this entry, is the following :

" April $. In to-day's Times:

'Henniker. on the 4th April, 1923, of heart failure,
the Honourable Mrs. Arthur Henniker. R. I. P/

" After a friendship of 30 years !"-

"April 10. F. Henniker buried to-day at I o'clock at
Thornham Magna, Eye, Suffolk/'

During the month of April Hardy finished the rough
draft of his poetical play, The Queen of Cornwall, and in
May he made, with infinite care, his last drawing, an
imaginary view of Tintagel Castle. This is delicately
drawn, an amazing feat for a man in his eighty- third year,
and it indicates his architectural tastes and early training.
It was used as an illustration when The Queen of Cornwall
was published.

In April, replying to a letter from Mr. John Gals-
worthy, he writes :

". . . The exchange of international thought is the
only possible salvation for the world : and though I was
decidedly premature when I wrote at the beginning of the
South African War that I hoped to see patriotism not
confined to realms, but circling the earth, I still maintain
that such sentiments ought to prevail.

"Whether they will do so before the year 10,000 is of
course what sceptics may doubt."

Towards the end of May Mr. and Mrs. Walter de la
Mare stayed at Max Gate for two nights, and early in

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 231

June, the day after Hardy's birthday, Mr. and Mrs.
Granville-Barker came to see him, bringing with them
friends he had not seen for many years, Mr. and Mrs.
Max Beerbohm.

"June 10. Relativity. That things and events always
were, are, and will be (e.g. Emma, Mother and Father are
living still in the past)/'

"June 21. Went with F. on board the Queen Elizabeth
on a visit to Sir John de Robeck, Lady de Robeck, and
Admiral W. W. Fisher/' More than once, upon the invi-
tation of Admiral Fisher, he had had a pleasant time on
board a battleship off Portland.

On June 25 Hardy and his wife went to Oxford by
road to stay at Queen's College for two nights. This was
the last long journey that Hardy was to make, and the
last time that he was to sleep away from Max Gate. It
was a delightful drive, by way of Salisbury, Hungerford,
and Wantage. At Salisbury they stopped for a little while
to look at the Cathedral, as Hardy always loved doing,
and at various old buildings, including the Training Col-
lege which he had visited more than fifty years before
when his two sisters were students there, and which is
faithfully described in Jude the Obscure.

They paused also at Fawley, that pleasant Berkshire
village described in the same novel under the name of
Marygreen. Here some of Hardy's ancestors were buried,
and he searched fruitlessly for their graves in the little
churchyard. His father's mother, the gentle, kindly
grandmother who lived with the family at Bockhampton
during Hardy's childhood, had spent the first thirteen years
of her life here as an orphan child, named Mary Head, and
her memories of Fawley were so poignant that she never
cared to return to the place after she had left it as a young
girl. The surname of Jude was taken from this place.

So well had their journey been timed that on their

232 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

arrival at Oxford they found awaiting them under the
entrance gateway of Queen's., Mr. Godfrey Elton,, who
was to be their cicerone, and whose impressions of their
visit are given herewith.

" Having been elected an Honorary Fellow Hardy paid
Queen's College a visit on June 25th and 26th, just after
the end of the summer term, of 1923. With a colleague,
Dr. Chattaway, I was delighted to meet him at the Col-
lege gate he was to come by road with Mrs. Hardy from
Dorchester. Neither Chattaway not I had met Hardy be-
fore, but I felt confident that we should recognise the now
legendary figure from his portraits. It was almost like
awaiting a visit from Thackeray or Dickens. . . .

"The car arrived punctually, and a smallish, fragile,
bright-eyed man, elderly certainly but as certainly not
old, climbed out of it. An elderly gentleman, one would
have said, who had always lived in the country and knew
much of the ways of wild creatures and crops. . . .

"We left Mr. and Mrs. Hardy at tea in the Provost's
lodgings. The Provost was only one year Mr. Hardy's
senior, but with his patriarchal white beard appeared a
great deal older, and as we left the party Hardy sitting
bright-eyed and upright on the edge of his chair it
seemed almost like leaving a new boy in charge of his
headmaster. . . . Next day there was a lunch in Common-
room, at which the Fellows and their wives met Mr. and
Mrs. Hardy, and a photograph in the Fellows' garden in
which Hardy appeared in his Doctor's gown with his
new colleagues. In the morning he was shown the sights
of the College. He was obviously happy to be in Oxford,
and happy, I think, too, to be of it, and I wished that it
had been term-time and that he could have seen the
younger life of the place, which one felt in some ways he
would have preferred to Tutors and Professors. We took
him round College a trifle too fast. He would pause reflec-
tively before Garrick's copy of the First Folio or the

. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 233

contemporary portrait of Henry V., and seem about to
make some comment when his conductors would be pass-
ing on again and some new historical information would
be being offered him. It was characteristic of him that in
some pause in this perambulation he found occasion to say
some kind words to me of some youthful verse of mine he
had chanced to see. . * . Afterwards he asked me to take
him into the High Street to see the famous curve, and we
spent some minutes searching for the precise spot from
which it can best be viewed, while in my mind memories
oijude the Obscure and an earlier Oxford conflicted with
anxieties as to the traffic of the existing town to which
he seemed quite indifferent. Then, apparently un-
wearied, he asked for the Shelley Memorial. . . .

"After this came the Common-room lunch, and after-
wards Mrs. Hardy invited me to accompany them on a
visit to the Masefields. We drove to Boar's Hill, paying a
visit in Christ Church on the way. Had it not been for
my constant consciousness that I was sitting before a
Classic, I should not have guessed that I was with a man
who wrote ; rather an elderly country gentleman with a
birdlike alertness and a rare and charming youthfulness
interested in everything he saw, and cultured, but surely
not much occupied with books : indeed almost all of us, his
new colleagues, would have struck an impartial observer as
far more bookish than the authorof the Wessex novels. . . .

"At the Masefields' Hardy was asked a question or
two about Jude's village, which it was thought he might
have passed on the road from Dorchester, and he spoke
briefly and depreciatingly of 'that fictitious person. If
there ever was such a person. . . . - When we left, Hardy
holding a rose which Mr. Masefield had cut from his gar-
den, there was still time to see more. I had expected that
he would wish to rest, but no ; he wanted to see the Martyrs'
Memorial and New College Cloisters. Obviously there
were certain of the Oxford sights which he had resolved

LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

to see again, I am ashamed to remember that, by some
error which I cannot now explain, I conducted our guests
to the Chapel, instead of the Cloisters, at New College.
But perhaps it was a fortunate error for the choir were
about to sing the evening service, and at Hardy's wish we
sat for about twenty minutes in the ante-chapel listening
in silence to the soaring of boys' voices. . . .

"Next morning Mr* and Mrs. Hardy left. He spoke
often afterwards of his pleasure at having seen his Col-
lege, and he contemplated another visit. This too brief
membership and his one visit remain a very happy
memory to his colleagues."

The Hardys motored back to Max Gate by way of
Newbury, Winchester, and Ringwood, having lunch in a
grassy glade in the New Forest in the simple way that
Hardy so much preferred.

This occasion was an outstanding one during the last
years of his life.

On July 20 the Prince of Wales paid a visit to Dor-
chester, to open the new Drill Hall for the Dorset Terri-
torials, and Hardy was invited to meet him there, and to
drive back to Max Gate where the Prince and the party
accompanying him were to lunch. It was a hot day, and
the whole episode might well have proved fatiguing and
irksome to a man of Hardy's years and retiring nature,
but owing to the thoughtfulness of the Prince and his
simple and friendly manner, all passed off pleasantly.

At lunch, beside the Prince and the Hardys, there were
present Lord Shaftesbury, Admiral Sir Lionel Halsey, Sir
Godfrey Thomas, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Walter Peacock,
and Messrs. Proudfoot and Wilson, the Duchy Stewards.

The Prince had a friendly talk with Hardy in the
garden, before leaving to visit certain Duchy farms in
Dorchester : the main characteristic of the visit was its
easy informality.

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 235

The next few months saw a certain activity on Hardy's
part. He visited several friends either for lunch or tea,, as
he did not go out in the evening except for a short walk,
nor did he again sleep away from Max Gate. Many from
a distance also called upon him, including his ever faith-
ful friend, Lady St. Helier, who travelled from Newbury
to Max Gate on October 3rd, this being their last meeting.

On November I5th the poetic drama, The Famous
Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall, was published. Hardy's
plan in writing this is clearly given in a letter to Mr.
Harold Child :

"The unities are strictly preserved, whatever virtue
there may be in that. (I, myself, am old-fashioned enough
to think there is a virtue in it, if it can be done without
artificiality. The only other case I remember attempting
it in was The Return of the Native*} The original events
could have been enacted in the time taken up by the per-
formance, and they continue unbroken throughout. The
change of persons on the stage is called a change of scene,,
there being no change of background.

"My temerity in pulling together into the space of an
hour events that in the traditional stories covered a long
time will doubtless be criticized, if it is noticed. But there
are so many versions of the famous romance that I felt
free to adapt it to my purpose in any way as, in fact, the
Greek dramatists did in their plays notably Euripides.

"Wishing it to be thoroughly English I have dropped
the name of Chorus for the conventional onlookers, and
called them Chanters, though they play the part of a Greek
Chorus to some extent. I have also called them Ghosts (I
don't for the moment recall an instance of this in a Greek
play). . . . Whether the lady ghosts in our performance
will submit to have their faces whitened I don't know! . . .

"I have tried to avoid turning the rude personages of
say, the fifth century into respectable Victorians, as was
done by Tennyson, Swinburne, Arnold, etc. On the other

236 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

hand it would have been impossible to present them as
they really were, with their barbaric manners and
surroundings."

On the 28th of the same month the play was produced
by the Hardy Players at the Corn Exchange at Dor-
chester. The great difficulties which the play presented
to amateur actors, unaccustomed to reciting blank verse,
who were at their best in rustic comedy, were more or less
overcome, but naturally a poetic drama did not make a
wide appeal. However the performance, and particularly
the rehearsals, gave Hardy considerable pleasure.

On December 10 the death was announced of Sir
Frederick Treves, Hardy's fellow townsman, the emi-
nent surgeon. Frederick Treves as a child had attended
the same school as Hardy's elder sister Mary, and it was
from the shop of Treves's father that Hardy as a boy pur-
chased his first writing desk. The care which he took of all
his possessions during his whole life is shown by the fact
that this desk was in his study without a mark or scratch
upon it at the time of his death. Because of the early as-
sociation and the love which they both bore to the county
there was a strong link between these two Dorset men.

On the last day but one of the year Mr. and Mrs. G.
Bernard Shaw and Colonel T. E. Lawrence lunched with
the Hardys and spent several hours with them. The
following entry in his notebook ends his brief chronicle of
the year's doings :

"31. New Year's Eve. Did not sit up. Heard the bells
in the evening."

1924

"January 2. Attended Frederick Treves's funeral at
St. Peter's. Very wet day. Sad procession to the ceme-
tery. Casket in a little white grave.

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 237

"Lord Dawson of Penn and Mr. Newman .Flower
came out to tea afterwards/'

On January 5 a poem by Hardy, "In Memorial*!,
F. T.," appeared in The Times, a last tribute to an old
friend.

During February The Queen of Cornwall was per-
formed in London by the Hardy Players of Dorchester,
but it was not altogether a success, partly owing to the
only building available having no stage suitable for the
performance, a rather small concert platform having to be
used.

On March 7 Hardy notes :

"To Stinsford with F. (E. first met 54 years ago)."

And later, on April 3 :

"Mother died 20 years ago to-day."

Among the many letters which arrived on June 2, the
84th anniversary of his birth, was one from a son of the
Baptist minister, Mr. Perkins, whom, in his youth, Hardy
had so respected. This correspondent was one of the
young men who had met him at the Baptist Chapel at the
eastern end of the town for a prayer-meeting which was
hindered by the arrival of a circus.

More than sixty years had elapsed since Hardy had
had any contact with this friend of his youth, and for a
little while he was strongly tempted to get into touch with
him again. However, too wide a gulf lay between and, as
might have been told in one of his poems, the gesture was
never made and the days slipped on into oblivion.

On June n Mr. Rutland Bough ton arrived at Max
Gate for a visit of two days, the purpose of which was to
consult Hardy about a plan he had for setting The Queen
of Cornwall to music. Hardy was greatly interested,
though he had heard no modern compositions, not even
the immensely popular "Faerie Song" from The Immortal
Hour. "The Blue Danube ", " The Morgenblatter Waltz ",
and the "Overture to William Tell" interested him more

238 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

strongly, and also church music, mainly on account of the
association with his early days.

But he found Mr. Bough ton a stimulating companion,
and was interested in his political views, though he could
not share them. After Mr. Boughton's departure he said
with conviction, "If I had talked to him for a few hours I
would soon have converted him".

One feature of this visit was a drive the Hardys took
with their guests across parts of Egdon Heath, which were
then one blaze of purple with rhododendrons in full bloom.

On June 16 a poem by Hardy entitled "Compassion"
appeared in The Times. It was written in answer to a re-
quest, and was intended to celebrate the Centenary of the
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Although not one of his most successful efforts, as he
was never happy when writing to order, it served to
demonstrate the poet's passionate hatred of injustice and
barbarity.

Much has been won more, maybe, than we know

And on we labour hopeful. "Ailinon !"
A mighty voice calls : "But may the good prevail !"
And "Blessed are the Merciful !"
Calls a yet mightier one.

On July i the Balliol Players, a party of undergraduates
from Oxford, visited Max Gate, during the course of a
tour in the west of England, to perform on the lawn The
Oresteia as The Curse of the House of Atreus. This was a
pleasant and informal occasion which gave delight to
Hardy. Always sympathetic to youth, and a lifelong ad-
mirer of Greek tragedy, he fully appreciated this mark of
affection and respect. The performance was not without
an amusing side. The day was a windy one, and cold for
July, hence the players with their bare arms and legs and
scanty costumes must have been none too comfortable.
However they ran about the lawn and pranced into the

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 239

flower beds with apparent enjoyment. Finding that the
carrying of lighted torches in the sunlight was ineffective,
they carried instead tall spikes of a giant flowering spiraea
which they plucked from a border. While having tea after
the play they gathered round Hardy, who talked to them
with a sincerity and simplicity that few but he could have
shown. Among the names of the players that he jotted
down in his notebook were those of Mr. A. L. Cliffe
Clytemnestra ; Mr. Anthony Asquith Cassandra; Mr.
Walter Oakshott Orestes ; Mr. EL T. Wade-Gery
Agamemnon; Mr. A. 4- Farrer Electra; and he also
notes, "The Balliol Players had come on bicycles, sending
on their theatrical properties in a lorry that sometimes
broke down". Mr. and Mrs. Granville-Barker were
present as spectators on this occasion.

A day or two later, with reference to what is not clear,
Hardy copies a quotation from Emerson :

"The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the
wise man at the usual."

On August 4, noted by Hardy as being the day on
which war was declared ten years before, he and Mrs.
Hardy motored to Netherton Hall in Devon to lunch
with Mr. and Mrs. Granville-Barker. Two days later he
received a visit from Siegfried Sassoon and Colonel T. E.
Lawrence.

About this time Rutland Boughton's music version of
The Queen of Cornwall was produced at Glastonbury, and
on August 28 Hardy with his wife went to see and hear it,
making the journey to Glastonbury by car.

From the 25th to the 3Oth Hardy was sitting to the
Russian sculptor, Serge Yourievitch, for his bust. This
was made in Hardy's study at Max Gate, and though he
enjoyed conversation with the sculptor he was tired by
the sittings, probably on account of his age, and definitely
announced that he would not sit again for anything of the
kind.

2 4 o LIFE'S DECLINE 19*1-25

For several years some of the members of the Dor-
chester Debating and Dramatic Society had wished to
perform a dramatization of Tess of the Urbervilles. After
much hesitation Hardy handed over his own dramatiza-
tion, although, as he notes in his diary, he had come to the
conclusion that to dramatize a novel was a mistake in art ;
moreover, that the play ruined the novel and the novel
the play. However, the result was that the company, self-
styled "The Hardy Players", produced Tess with such
unexpected success at Dorchester and Weymouth that it
was asked for in London, and the following year produced
there by professional actors for over a hundred nights,
Miss Gwen Ffrangfon-Davies taking the part of "Tess".

On the 22nd of October Hardy with his wife visited
for the first time since his childhood the old barn at the
back of Kingston Maurward. Here, as a small boy, he
had listened to village girls singing old ballads. He
pointed out to his wife the corner where they had sat. He
looked around at the dusty rafters and the d6bris, con-
sidering possibly the difference that seventy years had
made, and his manner as he left the barn was that of one
who wished he had not endeavoured to revive a scene
from a distant past. Almost certainly he was the only
human being left of that once gay party.

A characteristic note ends Hardy's diary for 1924:

" December 3 1 . New Year's Eve. Sat up and heard Big
Ben and the London church bells by wireless ring in the
New Year/'-

On this day also he copied a quotation from an essay
by L. Pearsall Smith*

"In every representation of Nature which is a work of
art there is to be found, as Professor Courthope said,
something which is not to be found in the aspect of Nature
which it represents ; and what that something is has been
a matter of dispute from the earliest days of criticism."

"The same writer adds" 5 notes Hardy, "Better use

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 241

the word 'inspiration' than 'genius 5 for inborn daemonic
genius as distinct from conscious artistry. "

(It seems to me it might be called "temperamental
impulse ", which, of course, must be inborn.)

Early in January 1925 Hardy sent to the Nineteenth
Century Magazine a poem entitled, "The Absolute
Explains"*

In the spring of this year, in connection with Hardy's
dog " Wessex", an incident occurred which was impossible
to explain. This dog, a wire-haired terrier, was of great
intelligence and very friendly to many who visited Max
Gate, though he had defects of temper, due perhaps to a
want of thorough training. Among those to whom he
showed a partiality was Mr. William Watkins, the honor-
ary secretary to the Society of Dorset Men in London.

About nine o'clock on the evening of April 18, Mr.
Watkins called at Max Gate to discuss with Hardy cer-
tain matters connected with his society. The dog, as was
his wont, rushed into the hall and greeted his friend with
vociferous barks. Suddenly these gave way to a piteous
whine, and the change was so startling that Wessex's
mistress went to see what had happened.

Nothing however seemed amiss, and the dog returned
into the room where Hardy was sitting and where he was
joined by Mr. Watkins. But even here Wessex seemed ill
at ease, and from time to time went to the visitor and
touched his coat solicitously with his paw, which he
always withdrew giving a sharp cry of distress.

Mr. Watkins left a little after ten o'clock, apparently
in very good spirits. Early the next morning there came a
telephone message from his son to say that the father,
Hardy's guest of the night before, had died quite sud-
denly about an hour after his return to the hotel from
Max Gate. As a rule the dog barked furiously when he
heard the telephone ring, but on this occasion he re-
mained silent, his nose between his paws.

242 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

On May 26 a letter and a leading article appeared in
The Times on the subject of a Thomas Hardy Chair of
Literature and a Wessex University. The letter was
signed by many eminent writers and educationalists. At
the date of writing, however, the Chair has not been
endowed.

Later in the summer, on July 15, a deputation from
Bristol University arrived at Max Gate to confer on
Hardy the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. This
was the fifth degree he had received from English and
Scottish Universities, the others being, in the order in
which the degrees were bestowed Aberdeen, Cam-
bridge, Oxford, and St. Andrews.

At the end of July Hardy sent off the manuscript of
his volume of poems. Human Shows, to the publishers,
and a month later he made arrangements for the per-
formance of his dramatization of Tess at the Barnes
Theatre. About this time he enters in his notebook :

"' Truth is what will work", said William James
(Harpers). A worse corruption of language was never
perpetrated."

Few other events were of interest to him during the
year. Tess of the d'Urbervilks was produced in London,
but he felt he had not sufficient strength to go up to see it.
After nearly two months at Barnes Theatre the play was
removed on November 2 to the Garrick Theatre, where
the hundredth performance took place.

The many pilgrimages Hardy made with his wife to
Stinsford Church took place usually in the evening during
the summer, and in the afternoon during the winter. On
October 9, however, contrary to his usual custom, he
walked to Stinsford in the morning. The bright sunlight
shone across the face of a worn tomb whose lettering
Hardy had often endeavoured to decipher, so that he
might recarve the letters with his penknife. This day,
owing to the sunlight, they were able to read ;

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 243

SACRED

to the memory of
ROBERT REASON

who departed this life

December 26th 1819

Aged 56 years

Dear friend should you mourn for me
I am where you soon must be.

Although Robert Reason had died twenty-one years
before the birth of the author of Under the Greenwood
Tree y he was faithfully described in that novel as Mr.
Penny,, the shoemaker. Hardy having heard so much of
him from old inhabitants of Bockhampton. He used to
regret that he had not used the real name, that being
much better for his purpose than the one he had invented.

On December 6 the company of players from the
Garrick Theatre arrived at Max Gate in the evening for
the purpose of giving a performance of Tess in the draw-
ing-room. The following description of this incident is
taken from a letter written by one of the company to a
correspondent in America who had particularly desired
her impression of the visit :

"Mr. and Mrs. Hardy behaved as if it were a most
usual occurrence for a party of West-End actors to arrive
laden with huge theatrical baskets of clothes and props.

"They met us in the hall and entertained us with tea >
cakes and sandwiches, and Mr. Hardy made a point of
chatting with everyone.

"The drawing-room was rather a fortunate shape
the door facing an alcove at one end of the room, and we
used these to make our exits and entrances, either exiting
into the hall or sitting quietly in the alcove.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, a friend of the Hardys, and
two maids who, in cap and apron, sat on the floor made
up our audience. I think I am correct in saying there was

244 LIFE'S DECLINE 1921-25

no one else. The room was shaded lamps and firelight
throwing the necessary light on our faces.

"'We played the scenes of Tess's home with chairs and
a tiny drawing-room table to represent farm furniture
tea-cups for drinking mugs when the chairs and tables
were removed the corner of the drawing-room became
Stonehenge, and yet in some strange way those present
said the play gained from the simplicity.

" It had seemed as if it would be a paralysingly difficult
thing to do, to get the atmosphere at all within a few feet
of the author himself and without any of the usual
theatrical illusion, but speaking for myself, after the first
few seconds it was perfectly easy, and Miss Ffranggon-
Davies's beautiful voice and exquisite playing of the
Stonehenge scene in the shadows thrown by the firelight
was a thing that I shall never forget. It was beautiful.

"Mr. Hardy insisted on talking to us until the last
minute. He talked of Tess as if she was someone real
whom he had known and liked tremendously. I think he
enjoyed the evening. I may be quite wrong, but I got
the impression that to him it seemed quite a proper and
usual way to give a play probably as good if not better
than any other and he seemed to have very little con-
ception of the unusualness and difficulties it might pre-
sent to us.

"The gossip of the country has it that his house was
designed and the garden laid out with the idea of being
entirely excluded from the gaze of the curious. Of course
it was dark when we arrived, but personally I should say
he had succeeded."

On December 20 he heard with regret of the death
of his friend, Sir Hamo Thornycroft, the sculptor, whose
bronze head of Hardy was presented later to the National
Portrait Gallery by Lady Thornycroft.

Siegfried Sassoon, a nephew of Sir Hamo's, hap-
pened to be paying Hardy a visit at the time. He left to

AET. 80-85 SOME FAREWELLS 245

go to the funeral of his uncle at Oxford, carrying with
him a laurel wreath which Hardy had sent to be placed
on the grave. Hardy had a warm regard for the sculptor,
whose fine upstanding mien spoke truly of his nobility of
character. The hours Hardy had spent in Sir Hamo's
London studio and at his home were pleasant ones, and
they had cycled together in Dorset while Sir Hamo was
staying at Max Gate*

"December 23. Mary's birthday. She came into the
world . . . and went out . , . and the world is just the
same . . . not a ripple on the surface left."

"December 31. New Year's Eve. F. and I sat up.
Heard on the wireless various features of New Year's Eve
in London : dancing at the Albert Hall, Big Ben striking
twelve, singing Auld Lang Syne, God Save the King,
Marseillaise, hurrahing/'

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST SCENE

igi6-January 1928: Aet. 86-87

EARLY in January 1926, feeling that his age compelled
him to such a step, Hardy resigned the Governorship of
the Dorchester Grammar School. He had always been
reluctant to hold any public offices,, knowing that he was
by temperament unfitted to sit on committees that con-
trolled or ordained the activities of others. He preferred
to be " the man with the watching eye".

On April 27, replying to a letter from an Oxford cor-
respondent, who was one of four who had signed a letter
to the Manchester Guardian upon the necessity of the
reformation of the Prayer Book Services, Hardy writes
from Max Gate :

"I have read your letter with interest: also the en-
closure that you and your friends sent to the Manchester
Guardian^ particularly because, when I was young, I had
a wish to enter the Church.

"I am now too old to take up the questions you lay
open, but I may say that it has seemed to me that a simpler
plan than that of mental reservation in passages no longer
literally accepted (which is puzzling to ordinary congrega-
tions) would be just to abridge the creeds and other prim-
itive parts of the Liturgy, leaving only the essentials. Un-
fortunately there appears to be a narrowing instead of a
broadening tendency among the clergy of late, which if
persisted in will exclude still more people from Church.

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 247

But if a strong body of young reformers were to make a
bold stand, in a sort of New Oxford Movement, they
would have a tremendous backing from the thoughtful
laity, and might overcome the retrogressive section of the
clergy.

"Please don't attach much importance to these casual
thoughts, and believe me,

"Very truly yours,
"T. H."

In May he received from Mr. Arthur M. Hind a
water-colour sketch of an attractive corner in the village
of Minterne, which the artist thought might be the
original of "Little Hintock" in the Woodlanders. In
thanking Mr. Hind, Hardy writes :

"The drawing of the barn that you have been so kind
as to send me has arrived uninjured, and I thank you
much for the gift. I think it a charming picture, and a
characteristic reproduction of that part of Dorset.

"As to the spot being the 'Little Hintock' of The
Woodlanders that is another question. You will be sur-
prised and shocked at my saying that I myself do not
know where "Little Hintock' is! Several tourists have
told me that they have found it, in every detail, and
have offered to take me to it, but I have never gone.

"However, to be more definite, it has features which
were to be found fifty years ago in the hamlets of Hermit-
age, Middlemarsh, Lyons-Gate, Revels Inn, Holnest, Mel-
bury Bubb, etc. all lying more or less under the eminence
called High S toy, just beyond Minterne and Dogbury Gate,
where the country descends into the Vale of Blackmore.

"The topographers you mention as identifying the
scene are merely guessers and are wrong. . . ."

On June 29 he again welcomed the Balliol Players,
whose chosen play this summer, the Hippolytus of Eurip-

248 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

ides, was performed on the lawn of Max Gate. About the
same time he sent by request a message of congratulation
and friendship to Weymouth, Massachusetts, by a deputa-
tion which was then leaving England to visit that town.

"July 1926. Note. It appears that the theory ex-
hibited in The Well-Beloved in 1892 has been since de-
veloped by Proust still further :

"Peu de personnes comprennent le caractere purement
subjectif du phenomene qu'est F amour, et la sorte de
creation que c'est d'une personne supplemental, dis-
tincte de celle qui porte le meme nom dans le monde, et
dont la plupart des elements sont tires de nous-memes."
(Ombre, i. 40.)

"Le desir s'eleve, se satisfait, disparait et c'est tout.
Ainsi, la jeune fille qu'on epouse n'est pas celle dont on
est tombe amoureux." (Ombre, ii. 158, 159.)

On September 8 a dramatization of The Mayor of
Casterbridge by Mr. John Drinkwater was produced at the
Barnes Theatre, and on the 2oth the play was brought to
Weymouth, where Hardy went to see it. He received a
great ovation in the theatre, and also, on his return to
Max Gate, from an enthusiastic crowd that collected
round the Pavilion Theatre on the pier. From balconies
and windows people were seen waving handkerchiefs as
he drove past. In his diary he notes :

" 20 September. Performance of Mayor of Casterbridge
at Weymouth by London Company, a "flying matin6e/
Beautiful afternoon, scene outside the theatre finer than
within/*

Writing to a friend about a proposed dramatization of
Jude the Obscure, he observes :

"I may say that I am not keen on the new mode (as I
suppose it is regarded, though really Elizabethan) of giv-
ing a series of episodes in the film manner instead of set
scenes.

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 249

"Of the outlines I sent you which suggested them-
selves to me many years ago, I thought the one I called
(I think) *4th Scheme' most feasible.

"Would not Arabella be the villain of the piece ? or
Jude's personal constitution ? so far as there is any
villain more than blind Chance. Christminster is of
course the tragic influence of Jude's drama in one sense,
but innocently so, and merely as crass obstruction. By
the way it is not meant to be exclusively Oxford, but any
old-fashioned University about the date of the story,
1860-70, before there were such chances for poor men as
there are now. I have somewhere printed that I had no
feeling against Oxford in particular."

A few days later he visited Mrs. Bankes at Kingston
Lacy in Dorset, and was greatly interested in the priceless
collection of pictures shown him. Of this occasion he writes :

" End of September. With F. on a visit to Mrs. Bankes
at Kingston Lacy. She told me an amusing story when
showing me a letter to Sir John Bankes from Charles the
First, acknowledging that he had borrowed 500 from Sir
John. Many years ago when she was showing the same
letter to King Edward, who was much interested in it, she
said, 'Perhaps, Sir, that's a little matter which could now
be set right'. He replied quickly, * Statute of Limitations,
Statute of Limitations'/'

Another note :

" i November. Went with Mr. Hanbury to Bockhamp-
ton and looked at fencing, trees, etc., with a view to
tidying and secluding the Hardy house."

That was his last visit to the place of his birth. It
was always a matter of regret to him if he saw this abode
in a state of neglect, or the garden uncherished.

During this month, November, his friend, Colonel
T. E. Lawrence, called to say good-bye, before starting for
India. Hardy was much affected by this parting, as T. E.

250 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

Lawrence was one of his most valued friends. He went
into the little porch and stood at the front door to see the
departure of Lawrence on his motor-bicycle. This machine
was difficult to start, and, thinking he might have to wait
some time Hardy turned into the house to fetch a shawl
to wrap round him. In the meantime, fearing that Hardy
might take a chill> Lawrence started the motor-bicycle and
hurried away. Returning a few moments after, Hardy was
grieved that he had not seen the actual departure, and
said that he had particularly wished to see Lawrence go.

The sight of animals being taken to market or driven
to slaughter always aroused in Hardy feelings of intense
pity> as he well knew, as must anyone living in or near a
market-town, how much needless suffering is inflicted. In
his notebook at this time he writes :

"December (ist Week). Walking with F. by railway,
saw bullocks and cows going to Islington (?) for slaughter,"
Under this he drew a little pencil sketch of the rows of
trucks as they were seen by him^ with animals' heads at
every opening,} looking out at the green countryside they
were leaving for scenes of horror in a far-off city. Hardy
thought of this sight for long after. It was found in his
will that he had left a sum of money to each of two
societies "to be applied so far as practicable to the in-
vestigation of the means by which animals are conveyed
from their houses to the slaughter-houses with a view to
the lessening of their sufferings in such transit".

The year drew quietly to an end. On the 23rd of
December a band of carol-singers from St. Peter's, Dor-
chester, came to Max Gate and sang to Hardy "While
Shepherds Watched" to the tune which used to be
played by his father and grandfather, a copy of which he
had given to the Rector.

A sadness fell upon the household, for Hardy's dog,
Wessex, now thirteen years old> was ill and obviously near
his end.

, 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 251

Two days after Christmas day Hardy makes this entry :

"17 December. Our famous dog 'Wessex' died at -J
past 6 in the evening, thirteen years of age/'

"28. Wessex buried."

"28. Night. Wessex sleeps outside the house the first
time for thirteen years."

The dog lies in a small turfed grave in the shrubbery
on the west side of Max Gate > where also were buried
several pet cats and one other dog. Moss. On the head-
stone is this inscription drawn up by Hardy, and carved
from his design :

THE
FAMOUS DOG

WESSEX

August 1913-27 Dec. 1926
Faithful. Unflinching.

There were those among Hardy's friends who thought
that his life was definitely saddened by the loss of Wessex,,
the dog having been the companion of himself and his
wife during twelve years of married life. Upon summer
evenings or winter afternoons Wessex would walk with
them up the grassy slope in the field in front of their house,
to the stile that led into Came Plantation, and while
Hardy rested on the stile the dog would sit on the ground
and survey the view as his master was doing. On Frome
Hill when his companions sat on the green bank by the
roadside, or on the barrow that crowns the hill, he would
lie in the grass at their feet and gaze at the landscape,
"as if," to quote Hardy's oft repeated comment on this,
"it were the right thing to do".

Those were happy innocent hours. A poem written
after the dog's death, "Dead Wessex, the dog to the
household", well illustrates Hardy's sense of loss. Two of
its verses are :

252 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

Do you look for me at times,

Wistful ones ?
Do you look for me at times

Strained and still ?
Do you look for me at times,
When the hour for walking chimes,
On that grassy path that climbs

Up the hill ?

You may hear a jump or trot,

Wistful ones,
You may hear a jump or trot

Mine, as 'twere
You may hear a jump or trot
On the stair or path or plot ;
But I shall cause it not,

Be not there.

On December 29 Hardy wrote to his friends, Mr. and
Mrs. Granville-Barker, from Max Gate :

"... This is intended to be a New Year's letter, but
I don't know if I have made a good shot at it. How kind
of you to thinkof sending me Raymond Guyot's Napoleon.
I have only glanced at it, at the text that is, as yet, but
what an interesting collection of records bearing on the
life of the man who finished the Revolution with 'a whiff
of grapeshot*, and so crushed not only its final horrors but
all the worthy aspirations of its earlier time, made them
as if they had never been, and threw back human altru-
ism scores, perhaps hundreds of years."

"31 December. New Year's Eve. Did not sit up/'

In January 1927 "A Philosophical Fantasy" appeared
in the Fortnightly Review. Hardy liked the year to open
with a poem of this type from him in some leading review
or newspaper. The quotation at the heading, "Milton
. . . made God argue", gives the keynote, and the phi-
losophy is much as he had set forth before, but still a ray
of hope is shown for the future of mankind.

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 253

Aye, to human tribes nor kindlessness
Nor love Fve given, but mindlessness,
Which state, though far from ending,
May nevertheless be mending.

Weeks passed through a cold spring and Hardy's
eighty-seventh birthday was reached. This year, instead
of remaining at Max Gate, he motored with his wife to
Netherton Hall in Devonshire, to spend a part of the day
with friends, Helen and Harley Granville-Barker. In a
letter written some months later, Mrs. Granville-Barker
describes this visit.

". . . There were no guests, just the peaceful routine
of everyday life, for that last birthday here. Mr. Hardy
said to you afterwards, you told me, that he thought it
might be the last, but at the time he was not in any way
sad or unlike himself. He noticed, as always, and unlike
most old people, the smallest things. At luncheon, I re-
member, one of the lace doilies at his place got awry in an
ugly way, showing the mat underneath, and I saw him,
quietly and with the most delicate accuracy, setting it
straight again all the time taking his part in the talk.

"Wasn't it that day he said, speaking of Augustus
John's portrait of him :

"'I don't know whether that is how I look or not
but that is how I feel' ?

"In the afternoon we left him alone in the library
because we thought he wanted to rest a little. It was
cold, for June, and a wood fire was lighted.

"Once we peeped in at him through the garden
window. He was not askep but sitting, walled in with
books, staring into the fire with that deep look of his.
The cat had established itself on his knees and he was
stroking it gently, but half-unconsciously.

" It was a wonderful picture of him. I shall not forget
it. Nor shall I forget the gay and startlingly youthful

254 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

gesture with which he flourished his hat towards us as,
once in the motor car, later that afternoon, he drove away
from us."

At the end of the day he seemed in a sad mood, and his
wife sought to amuse him by a forecast of small festivities
she had planned for his ninetieth birthday, which she
assured him would be a great occasion. With a flash of
gaiety he replied that he intended to spend that day in bed.

Once again the Balliol Players appeared at Max Gate,
this year on July 6. As before, their visit gave Hardy con-
siderable pleasure, and after their performance on the
lawn of Iphigenia in Aulis he talked with them freely,
appreciating their boyish ardour and their modesty.

A few days later he received visits from his friends,
Siegfried Sassoon, and Mr. and Mrs. John Masefield,
and on July 21 he laid the foundation stone of the new
building of the Dorchester Grammar School, which was
to be seen clearly from the front gate of his house, looking
towards the Hardy Monument, a noticeable object on the
sky-line, to the south-west. It was Hardy's custom nearly
every fine morning after breakfast in the summer to walk
down to the gate to see what the weather was likely to be
by observing this tower in the distance.

The day chosen for the stone-laying was cold and
windy, by no means a suitable day for a man of Hardy's
advanced years to stand in the open air bareheaded.
Nevertheless he performed his task with great vigour,
and gave the following address in a clear resonant voice
that could be heard on the outskirts of the crowd that
collected to hear him :

"I have been asked to execute the formal part of to-
day's function, which has now been done, and it is not
really necessary that I should add anything to the few
words that are accustomed to be used at the laying of
foundation or dedication stones. But as the circumstances

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 255

of the present case are somewhat peculiar, I will just en-
large upon them for a minute or two. What I have to say
is mainly concerning the Elizabethan philanthropist,
Thomas Hardy, who, with some encouragement from the
burgesses, endowed and rebuilt this ancient school after
its first humble shape him whose namesake I have the
honour to be, and whose monument stands in the church
of St. Peter, visible from this spot. The well-known epi-
taph inscribed upon his tablet, unlike many epitaphs, does
not, I am inclined to think, exaggerate his virtues, since it
was written, not by his relatives or dependents, but by
the free burgesses of Dorchester in gratitude for his good
action towards the town. This good deed was accom-
plished in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and the
substantial stone building in which it merged eventually,
still stands to dignify South Street, as we all know, and
hope it may remain there.

" But what we know very little about is the personality
of this first recorded Thomas Hardy of the Froome Valley
here at our back, though his work abides. He was without
doubt of the family of the Hardys who landed in this
county from Jersey in the fifteenth century, acquired
small estates along the river upwards towards its source,
and whose descendants have mostly remained hereabouts
ever since, the Christian name of Thomas having been
especially affected by them. He died in 1599, and it is
curious to think that though he must have had a modern
love of learning not common in a remote county in those
days, Shakespeare's name could hardly have been known
to him, or at the most vaguely as that of a certain
ingenious Mr. Shakespeare who amused the London
playgoers ; and that he died before Milton was born.

"In Carlylean phraseology, what manner of man he
was when he walked this earth, we can but guess, or what
he looked like, what he said and did in his lighter moments
and at what age he died. But we may shrewdly conceive

256 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

that he was a far-sighted man, and would not be much
surprised, if he were to revisit the daylight, to find that
his building had been outgrown, and no longer supplied
the needs of the present inhabitants for the due education
of their sons. His next feeling might be to rejoice in the
development of what was possibly an original design of
his own, and to wish the reconstruction every success.

"We living ones all do that, and nobody more than I,
my retirement from the Governing body having been
necessitated by old age only. Certainly everything prom-
ises well. The site can hardly be surpassed in England for
health, with its open surroundings, elevated and bracing
situation, and dry subsoil, while it is near enough to the
sea to get very distinct whiffs of marine air. Moreover, it
is not so far from the centre of the borough as to be
beyond the walking powers of the smallest boy. It has
a capable headmaster, holding every modern idea on
education within the limits of good judgement, and
assistant masters well equipped for their labours, which
are not sinecures in these days.

"I will conclude by thanking the Governors and
other friends for their kind thought in asking me to
undertake this formal initiation of the new building,
which marks such an interesting stage in the history of
the Dorchester Grammar School."

After the ceremony, having spoken to a few friends,
Hardy went away without waiting for the social gathering
that followed. He was very tired, and when he reached
home he said that he had made his last public appearance.

There seemed no ill after-effects, however, and on
August 9 Hardy drove with Gustav Hoist to "Egdon
Heath'*, just then purple with heather. They then went
on to Puddletown and entered the fine old church, and
both climbed up into the gallery, where probably some of
Hardy's ancestors had sat in the choir, more than a
century earlier*

. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 257'

On August 8 he wrote to Mr. J. B. Priestley :
"... I send my sincere thanks for your kind gift of
the 'George Meredith' book, and should have done so
before if I had not fallen into the sere, and weak eyesight
did not trouble me. I have read your essay, or rather
have had it read to me, and have been much interested in
the bright writing of one in whom I had already fancied
I discerned a coming force in letters.

"I am not at all a critic, especially of a critic, and
when the author he reviews is a man who was,! off and on,
a friend of mine for forty years ; but it seems to me that
you hold the scales very fairly. Meredith was, as you
recognize, and might have insisted on even more strongly,
and I always felt, in the direct succession of Congreve and
the artificial comedians of the Restoration, and in getting
his brilliancy we must put up with the fact that he would
not, or could not at any rate did not when aiming to
represent the 'Comic Spirit', let himself discover the
tragedy that always underlies Comedy if you only scratch
it deeply enough. "

During the same month Hardy and his wife motored
to Bath and back. On the way they had lunch sitting on a
grassy bank, as they had done in former years, to Hardy's
pleasure. But now a curious sadness brooded over them ;
lunching in the open air had lost its charm, and they did
not attempt another picnic of this kind.

In Bath Hardy walked about and looked long and
silently at various places that seemed to have an interest
for him. He seemed like a ghost revisiting scenes of a long-
dead past. After a considerable rest in the Pump Room
they returned home. Hardy did not seem tired by this
drive.

Some weeks later they motored to Ilminster, a little
country town that Hardy had long desired to visit. He
was interested in the Church, and also in the tomb of the

258 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

founder of Wadham College therein. By his wish, on their
return, they drove past the quarries where Ham Hill
stone was cut.

Stopping at Yeovil they had tea in a restaurant, where
a band of some three musicians were playing. One of
Hardy's most attractive characteristics was his ability to
be interested in simple things, and before leaving he stood
and listened appreciatively to the music, saying after-
wards what a delightful episode that had been,

On September 6, an exceedingly wet day, Mr. and
Mrs. John Galsworthy called on their way to London.
During the visit Hardy told them the story of a murder
that had happened eighty years before. Mr. Galsworthy
seemed struck by these memories of Hardy's early child-
hood, and asked whether he had always remembered
those days so vividly, or only lately. Hardy replied that
he had always remembered clearly. He could recall what
his mother had said about the Rush murder when he was
about the age of six: "The governess hanged him." He
was puzzled, and wondered how a governess could hang
a man. Mr. and Mrs. Galsworthy thought that Hardy
seemed better than when they saw him last, better, in
fact, than they had ever seen him.

September 7 being a gloriously fine day, Hardy with
his wife walked across the fields opposite Max Gate to see
the building of the new Grammar School, then in progress.

During September Hardy was revising and re-arrang-
ing the Selected Poems in the Golden Treasury Series in
readiness for a new edition. The last entry but one in his
notebook refers to the sending of the copy to the pub-
lishers, and finally, on the igth of September, he notes
that Mr. Weld of Lulworth Castle called with some
friends. After this no more is written, but a few notes
were made by his wife for the remaining weeks of 1927.

About the 2ist of September they drove to Lulworth
Castle to lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Weld and a house-

86-87 THE LAST SCENE 259

party, and Hardy was much interested In all that he was
shown in the Castle and in the adjoining church. A few
weeks later he and his wife lunched at Charborough Park,
the scene of Two on a Tower > the first time he had entered
this house.

NOTES BY F. E. H.

"October 24. A glorious day, T. and I walked across
the field in front of Max Gate towards Came. We both
stood on a little flat stone sunk in the path that we call
our wishing stone, and I wished. T. may have done so,
but he did not say.

"On the way he gathered up some waste paper that
was blowing about the lane at the side of our house and
buried it in the hedge with his stick, and going up the
path to Came he stopped for quite a long time to pull off
the branches of a tree a heap of dead weeds that had been
thrown there by some untidy labourer who had been
cleaning the field. He says that a man has no public spirit
who passes by any untidiness out of doors, litter of paper
or similar rubbish/'

"October 27. During the evening he spoke of an ex-
perience he had a few years ago. There were four or five
people to tea at Max Gate, and he noticed a stranger
standing by me most of the time. Afterwards he asked
who that dark man was who stood by me. I told him that
there was no stranger present, and I gave him the names
of the three men who were there, all personal friends. He
said that it was not one of these, and seemed to think that
another person had actually been there. This afternoon
he said : * I can see his face now. '

" Later in the evening, during a terrific gale, I said
that I did not wonder that some people disliked going
along the dark road outside our house at night.

"T. replied that for twelve years he walked back-
wards and forwards from Bockhampton to Dorchester

260 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

often in the dark, and he was only frightened twice. Once
was when he was going up Stinsford Hill, no habitation of
any sort being in sight, and he came upon two men sitting
on chairs, one on either side of the road. By the moon-
light he saw that they were strangers to him ; terrified, he
took to his heels ; he never heard who they were or any-
thing to explain the incident.

"The other time was when, as a small boy walking
home from school, reading Pilgrim 's Progress, he was so
alarmed by the description of Apollyon that he hastily
closed his book and went on his way trembling, thinking
that Apollyon was going to spring out of a tree whose dark
branches overhung the road. He remembered his terror
he said, that evening, seventy-five years afterwards."

"October 30. At lunch T. H. talked about Severn,
speaking with admiration of his friendship towards Keats.
He said that it must have been quite disinterested, as
Keats was then comparatively obscure."

"October 31. Henry Williamson, the author of Tarka
the Otter, called."

"November 3. While he was having tea to-day, T. H.
said that whenever he heard any music from // Trovatore,
it carried him back to the first year when he was in
London and when he was strong and vigorous and
enjoyed his life immensely. He thought that // Trovatore
was good music."

"November 4. We drove in the afternoon to Stins-
ford, to put flowers on the family graves. The tombs are
very green, being covered with moss because they are
under a yew-tree. T. H. scraped off most of the moss with
a little wooden implement like a toy spade, six inches in
length, which he made with his own hands and which he
carries in his pocket when he goes to Stinsford. He re-
marked that Walter de la Mare had told him that he
preferred to see the gravestones green.

"Then we drove to Talbothays (his brother's house).

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 261

As we turned up Dark Hill, T. H. pointed out the place
where, as a small boy, he had left an umbrella in the
hedge, having put it down while he cut a stick. He did not
remember it until he reached home and his mother asked
him where was his umbrella. As he went to school next
morning he looked in the hedge and found it where he
had left it.

"After having been with H. H. and K. H. (the brother
and sister) for half an hour we returned home/'

Thus ended a series of visits paid regularly to his
family extending over forty years. While his parents were
alive, Hardy went to see them at Bockhampton nearly
every Sunday afternoon when he was in Dorchester, walk-
ing at first, then cycling. After his mother's death he
visited his two sisters and his brother at Bockhampton,
and later at Talbothays, to which house they moved in
1912. These visits continued until the last year or two of
his life, when he was unable to go very often. He cycled
there in fine weather until he was over eighty, and then he
walked, until the distance seemed beyond his powers.
Stinsford was a favourite haunt until the last few months
of his life, the walk there from Max Gate, across the
water-meadows, being a particularly beautiful one ; and
the churchyard, to him, the most hallowed spot on earth.

"November 4 continued. At tea T. H* said that he had
been pleased to read that day an article by the composer,
Miss Ethel Smyth, saying that // Trovatore was good
music. He reminded me of what he said yesterday."

"November n. Armistice Day. T. came downstairs
from his study and listened to the broadcasting of a serv-
ice at Canterbury Cathedral. We stood there for the two
minutes* silence. He said afterwards that he had been
thinking of Frank George, his cousin, who was killed at
Gallipoli.

" In the afternoon we took one of our usual little walks,
around 'the triangle' as we call it, that is down the lane

262 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

by the side of our house, and along the cinder-path beside
the railway line. We stood and watched a goods train
carrying away huge blocks of Portland stone as we have
done so many times. He seems never tired of watching
these stone-laden trucks. He said he thought that the
shape of Portland would be changed in the course of years
by the continual cutting away of its surface.

"Sitting by the fire after tea he told me about various
families of poachers he had known as a boy, and how,
when a thatched house at Bockhampton was pulled down, a
pair of swingels was found under the thatch. This was an
instrument of defense used by poachers, and capable of
killing a man. 1

"He said that if he had his life over again he would
prefer to be a small architect in a country town, like
Mr. Hicks at Dorchester, to whom he was articled."

"November 17. To-day T. H. was speaking, and evi-
dently thinking a great deal, about a friend, a year or two
older than himself, who was a fellow-pupil at Mr. Hicks's
office. I felt, as he talked, that he would like to meet this
man again more than anyone in the world. He is in Aus-
tralia now, if alive, and must be nearly ninety. His name
is Henry Robert Bastow ; he was a Baptist and evidently
a very religious youth, and T. H. was devoted to him. I
suggested that we might find out something about him by
sending an advertisement to Australian newspapers, but
T. H. thought that would not be wise,"

" Sunday ) November 27. The fifteenth anniversary of
the death of Emma Lavinia Hardy ; Thursday was the
anniversary of the death of Mary, his elder sister. For
two or three days he has been wearing a black hat as a
token of mourning, and carries a black walking-stick that
belonged to his first wife, all strangely moving.

1 Poachers' iron swingels. A strip of iron ran down three or four sides
of the flail part, and the two flails were united by three or four links of
chain, the keepers carrying cutlasses which would cut oflf the ordinary
eel-skin hinge of a flail. From T, H*s notebook, Dec. 1884.

^

O
Jh &<

fa***

0JL*fCU*

J^U*

U t

l *****
t^k
^f]n

Facsimile reproduction from page of original MS. of " Winter Words"

written 1927.

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 263

"T, EL has been writing almost all the day, revising
poems. When he came down to tea he brought one to
show me, about a desolate spring morning,, and a shepherd
counting his sheep and not noticing the weather." This is
the poem in Pointer Words called "An Unkindly May".

"November 28. Speaking about ambition T. said to-
day that he had done all that he meant to do, but he did
not know whether it had been worth doing.

"His only ambition, so far as he could remember, was
to have some poem or poems in a good anthology like the
Golden Treasury.

"The model he had set before him was 'Drink to me
only', by Ben Jonson."

The earliest recollection of his childhood (as he had
told me before) was that when he was four years old his
father gave him a small toy concertina and wrote on it,
"Thomas Hardy, 1844". By this inscription he knew, in
after years, his age when that happened.

Also he remembered, perhaps a little later than this,
being in the garden at Bockhampton with his father on a
bitterly cold winter day. They noticed a field-fare, half-
frozen, and the father took up a stone idly and threw it at
the bird, possibly not meaning to hit it. The field-fare
fell dead, and the child Thomas picked it up and it was as
light as a feather, all skin and bone, practically starved.
He said he had never forgotten how the body of the field-
fare felt in his hand : the memory had always haunted
him.

He recalled how, crossing the ewe-leaze when a child,
he went on hands and knees and pretended to eat grass in
order to see what the sheep would do. Presently he
looked up and found them gathered around in a close
ring, gazing at him with astonished faces.

An illness, which at the commencement did not seem
to be serious, began on December n. On the morning

264 LIFE'S DECLINE 1926-28

of that day he sat at the writing-table in his study, and
felt totally unable to work. This, he said, was the first
time that such a thing had happened to him.

From then his strength waned daily. He was anx-
ious that a poem he had written, "Christmas in the Elgin
Room" should be copied and sent to The Times. This was
done, and he asked his wife anxiously whether she had
posted it with her own hands. When she assured him
that she had done so he seemed content, and said he was
glad that he had cleared everything up. Two days later
he received a personal letter of thanks, with a warm
appreciation of his work, from the editor of The Times.
This gave him pleasure, and he asked that a reply should
be sent.

He continued to come downstairs to sit for a few hours
daily, until Christmas day. After that he came down-
stairs no more.

On December 26 he said that he had been thinking
of the Nativity and of the Massacre of the Innocents, and
his wife read to him the gospel accounts, and also articles
in the Encyclopedia Biblica* He remarked that there was
not a grain of evidence that the gospel story was true in
any detail.

As the year ended a window in the dressing-room
adjoining his bedroom was opened that he might hear the
bells, as that had always pleased him. But now he said
that he could not hear them, and did not seem interested.
His strength still failed. The weather was bitterly
cold, and snow had fallen heavily, being twelve inches
deep in parts of the garden. In the road outside there were
snowdrifts that in places would reach a man 's waist.

By desire of the local practitioner additional advice
was called in, and Hardy's friend, Sir Henry Head, who
was living in the neighbourhood, made invaluable sugges-
tions and kept a watchful eye upon the case. But the
weakness increased daily.

AET. 86-87 THE LAST SCENE 265

He could no longer listen to the reading of prose,
though a short poem now and again interested him* In
the middle of one night he asked his wife to read aloud
to him "The Listeners ", by Walter de la Mare.

On January 10 he made a strong rally, and although
he was implored not to do so he insisted upon writing a
cheque for his subscription to the Pension Fund of the
Society of Authors. For the first time in his life he made
a slightly feeble signature, unlike his usual beautiful firm
handwriting, and then he laid down his pen.

Later he was interested to learn that J. M. Barrie, his
friend of many years, had arrived from London to assist
in any way that might be possible. He was amused when
told that this visitor had gone to the kitchen door to
avoid any disturbance by ringing the front door bell.

In the evening he asked that Robert Browning's
poem, " Rabbi Ben Ezra", should be read aloud to him-
While reading it his wife glanced at his face to see whether
he were tired, the poem being a long one of thirty-two
stanzas, and she was struck by the look of wistful intent-
ness with which Hardy was listening. He indicated that
he wished to hear the poem to the end.

He had a better night, and in the morning of January
1 1 seemed so much stronger that one at least of those who
watched beside him had confident hopes of his recovery,
and an atmosphere of joy prevailed in the sickroom.
An immense bunch of grapes arrived from London, sent
by a friend, and this aroused in Hardy great interest.
As a rule he disliked receiving gifts, but on this occasion
he showed an almost childlike pleasure, and insisted
upon the grapes being held up for the inspection of the
doctor, and whoever came in the room. He ate some, and
said quite gaily, "I'm going on with these". Everything
he had that day in the way of food or drink he seemed
to appreciate keenly, though naturally he took but
little. As it grew dusk, after a long musing silence, he

a66 LIFE'S DECLINE 19*6-28

asked his wife to repeat to him a verse from the Rubdiydt
of Omar Khayyam, beginning

Oh, Thou, who man of baser Earth

She took his copy of this work from his bedside and read

to him :

Oh, Thou, who man of baser Earth didst make.
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake :

For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man *
Is blacken'd Man's forgiveness give and take !

He indicated that he wished no more to be read.

In the evening he had a sharp heart attack of a kind
he had never had before. The doctor was summoned and
came quickly, joining Mrs. Hardy at the bedside. Hardy
remained conscious until a few minutes before the end.
Shortly after nine he died.

An hour later one, going to his bedside yet again, saw
on the death-face an expression such as she had never
seen before on any being, or indeed on any presentment
of the human countenance. It was a look of radiant
triumph such as imagination could never have conceived.
Later the first radiance passed away, but dignity and
peace remained as long as eyes could see the mortal
features of Thomas Hardy.

The dawn of the following day rose in almost un-
paralleled splendour. Flaming and magnificent the sky
stretched its banners over the dark pines that stood
sentinel around.

THE END

APPENDIX I

ON the morning of Thursday, January 12, the Dean of
Westminster readily gave his consent to a proposal that
Hardy should be buried in Westminster Abbey ; and news
of this proposal and its acceptance was sent to Max Gate.
There it was well known that Hardy's own wish was to be
buried at Stinsford, amid the graves of his ancestors and
of his first wife. After much consideration a compromise
was found between this definite personal wish and the
nation 's claim to the ashes of the great poet. On Friday,
January 13, his heart was taken out of his body and
placed by itself in a casket* On Saturday, January 14,
the body was sent to Woking for cremation, and thence
the ashes were taken the same day to Westminster Abbey
and placed in the Chapel of St. Faith to await interment.
On Sunday, January 15, the casket containing the heart
was taken to the church at Stinsford, where it was laid
on the altar steps.

At two o'clock on Monday, January 16, there were
three services in three different churches. In Westminster
Abbey the poet's wife and sister were the chief mourners,
while in the presence of a great crowd, which included
representatives of the King and other members of the
Royal Family, and of many learned and other societies,
the ashes of Thomas Hardy were buried with stately
ceremonial in Poet's Corner. The pall-bearers were the
Prime Minister (Mr. Stanley Baldwin) and Mr. Ramsay
MacDonald, representing the Government and Parlia-
ment ; Sir James Barrie, Mr. John Galsworthy, Sir Ed-

267

268 APPENDIX I

mund Gosse, Professor A. E. Housman, Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, representing literature ;
and the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge (Mr.
A. S. Ramsey), and the Pro-Provost of Queen's College,
Oxford (Dr. E. M. Walker), representing the Colleges of
which Hardy was an honorary Fellow. A spadeful of
Dorset earth, sent by a Dorset farm labourer, Mr. Chris-
topher Corbin, was sprinkled on the casket. In spite of
the cold and wet the streets about the Abbey were full of
people who had been unable to obtain admission to the
service, but came as near as they might to taking part in
it. At the same hour at Stinsford, where Hardy was bap-
tized, and where as boy and man he had often worshipped,
his brother, Mr. Henry Hardy, was the chief mourner,
while, in the presence of a rural population, the heart of
this lover of rural Wessex was buried in the grave of his
first wife among the Hardy tombs under the great yew-
tree in the corner of the churchyard. And in Dorchester
all business was suspended for an hour, while at St.
Peter's Church the Mayor and Corporation and many
other dignitaries and societies attended a memorial
service in which the whole neighbourhood joined.

H. C.

APPENDIX II

LETTERS FROM THOMAS HARDY TO DR. CALEB SALEEBY

MAX GATE, DORCHESTER,

Dec. 21, 1914.
DEAR SiR 3

I have read with much interest the lecture on The
Longest Price of War that you kindly send : and its
perusal does not diminish the gloom with which this
ghastly business on the Continent fills me, as it fills so
many. The argument would seem to favour Conscription,
since the inert, if not the unhealthy, would be taken,
I imagine.

Your visits to The Dynasts show that, as Granville-
Barker foretold, thoughtful people would care about it.
My own opinion when I saw it was that it was the only
sort of thing likely to take persons of musing turn into a
theatre at this time.

I have not read M. Bergson's book, and if you should
not find it troublesome to send your copy as you suggest,
please do.

The theory of the Prime Force that I used in The
"Dynasts was published in Jan. 1904. The nature of the
determination embraced in the theory is that of a collec-
tive will ; so that there is a proportion of the total will in
each part of the whole, and each part has therefore, in
strictness, some freedom, which would, in fact, be opera-

269

270 APPENDIX II

tive as such whenever the remaining great mass of will in
the universe should happen to be in equilibrium.

However, as the work is intended to be a poetic drama
and not a philosophic treatise I did not feel bound to
develop this.

The assumption of unconsciousness in the driving
force is, of course, not new. But I think the view of the
unconscious force as gradually becoming conscious: i.e.
that consciousness is creeping further and further back
towards the origin of force, had never (so far as I know)
been advanced before The Dynasts appeared. But being
only a mere impressionist I must not pretend to be a
philosopher in a letter, and ask you to believe me,
Sincerely yours,

THOMAS HARDY.

Dr. Saleeby.

MAX GATE, DORCHESTER,
Feb. 2, 1915.

DEAR DR. SALEEBY,

Your activities are unlimited. I should like to hear your
address on "Our War for International Law". Personally
I feel rather disheartened when I think it probable that
the war will end by sheer exhaustion of the combatants,
and that things will be left much as they were before.
But I hope not.

I have been now and then dipping into your Bergson,
and shall be returning the volume soon. I suppose I may
assume that you are more or less disciple, or fellow-
philosopher, of his. Therefore you may be rather shocked

APPENDIX II 271

by some views I hold about his teachings if I may
say I hold any views about anything whatever, which I
hardly do.

His theories are certainly much more delightful than
those they contest, and I for one would gladly believe
them, but I cannot help feeling all the time that he is
rather an imaginative and poetical writer than a reasoner,
and that for his attractive assertions he does not adduce
any proofs whatever. His use of the word "creation'*
seems loose to me. Then, as to "conduct". I fail to see
how, if it is not mechanism, it can be other than Caprice,
though he denies it (p. 50). And he says that Mechanism
and Finalism (I agree with him as to Finalism) are only
external views of our conduct.

"Our conduct extends between them, and slips much
further." Well, I hope it may, but he nowhere shows that
it does. And again: "a mechanistic conception . . .
treats the living as the inert. . . . Let us on the contrary,
trace a line of demarcation between the inert and the
living (208)." Well, let us, to our great pleasure, if we can
see why we should introduce an inconsistent rupture of
order into uniform and consistent laws of the same.

You will see how much I want to be a Bergsonian
(indeed I have for many years). But I fear that his phi-
losophy is, in the bulk, only our old friend Dualism in a
new suit of clothes an ingenious fancy without real
foundation, and more complicated, and therefore less
likely than the determinist fancy and others that he
endeavours to overthrow.

You must not think me a hard-hearted rationalist for
all this. Half my time (particularly when I write verse) I
believe in the modern use of the word not only in
things that Bergson does, but in spectres, mysterious
voices, intuitions, omens, dreams, haunted places, etc., etc.

But then, I do not believe in these in the old sense of
belief any more for that ; and in arguing against Bergson-

272 APPENDIX II

ism I have, of course, meant belief in its old sense when
I aver myself incredulous.

Sincerely yours,

THOMAS HARDY. 1

3

MAX GATE, DORCHESTER,

16.3.1915.
DEAR DR. SALEEBY,

My thanks for the revised form of The Longest Price
of War, which I am reading.

#*

I am returning, or shall be in a day or two, your
volume of Bergson. It is most interesting reading, and
one likes to give way to its views and assurances without
criticizing them.

If however we ask for reasons and proof (which I don't
care to do) I am afraid we do not get them.

An Slan vital by which I understand him to mean a
sort of additional and spiritual force, beyond the merely
unconscious push of life the "will" of other philoso-
phers that propels growth and development seems
much less probable than single and simple determinism,
or what he calls mechanism, because it is more complex :
and where proof is impossible probability must be our
guide. His partly mechanistic and partly creative theory
seems to me clumsy and confused.

He speaks of " the enormous gap that separates even
the lowest form of life from the inorganic world ". Here
again it is more probable that organic and inorganic

1 A great part of this letter will be found in a slightly different form on
pp. 167-168 of this volume. Both versions are printed in order to illustrate
Hardy's artistic inability to rest content with anything that he wrote until
he had brought the expression as near to his thought as language would
allow. He would, for instance, often go on revising his poems for his own
satisfaction after their publication in book form. F. E. H.

APPENDIX II 273

modulate into each other, one nature and law operating
throughout. But the most fatal objection to his view of
creation plus propulsion seems to me to lie in the existence
of pain. If nature were creative she would have cheated
painlessness, or be in process of creating it pain being
the first thing we instinctively fly from. If on the other
hand we cannot introduce into life what is not already
there, and are bound to mere recombination of old ma-
terials, the persistence of pain is intelligible.

Sincerely yours,

THOMAS HARDY.

APPENDIX III

MAX GATE,
22.3/04.
MY DEAR CLODD,

I did not quite think that The "Dynasts would suit your
scientific mind, or shall I say the scientific side of your
mind, so that I am much pleased to hear that you have
really got pleasure out of it,

As to my having said nothing or little (I think I did
just allude to it a long while ago) about having it in hand,
the explanation is simple enough I did not mean to pub-
lish Part I by itself until quite a few days before I sent it
up to the publishers : and to be engaged in a desultory
way on a MS. which may be finished in 5 years (the date
at which I thought I might print it, complete) does not
lead one to say much about it. On my return here from
London I had a sudden feeling that I should never carry
the thing any further, so off it went. But now I am rather
inclined to go on with it. Though I rather wish I had kept
back the Parts till the whole could be launched, as I at
first intended.

What you say about the "Will" is true enough, if you
take the word in its ordinary sense. But in the lack of
another word to express precisely what is meant, a second-
ary sense has gradually arisen, that of effort exercised in a
reflex or unconscious manner. Another word would have
been better if one could have had it, though "Power"
would not do, as power can be suspended or withheld, and

274

APPENDIX III 275

the forces of nature cannot : Howeve^ there are inconsist-
encies in the Phantoms, no doubt. But that was a point
to which I was somewhat indifferent, since they are not
supposed to be more than the best human intelligence of
their time (see p. viii) in a sort of quintessential form. I
speak of the "Years". The "Pities" are, of course,
merely Humanity, with all its weaknesses.

You speak of Meredith. I am sorry to learn that he
has been so seriously ill. Leslie Stephen gone, too ! They
are thinning out ahead of us. I have just lost an old friend
down here, of 47 years standing ! a man whose opinions
differed almost entirely from my own on most subjects :
and yet he was a good and sincere friend the brother of
the present Bp. of Durham, and like him in old fashioned
views of the Evangelical school.

I hope Aldeburgh keeps you blooming, and am
Sincerely yours,

THOMAS HARDY.

MAX GATE, DORCHESTER,

New Year's Eve, 1907
MY DEAR CLODD,

I write a line to thank you for that nice little copy of
Munro 's Lucretius, and to wish you a happy New Year.
I am familiar with two translations of the poet, but not
with this one, so the book is not wasted.

I have been thinking what a happy man you must be
at this time of the year, in having to write your name
8000 times. Nobody wants me to write mine once !

In two or three days I shall have done with the proofs
of Dynasts III. It is well that the business should be over,
for I have been living in Wellington's campaigns so much
lately that, like George IV, I am almost positive that I
took part in the battle of Waterloo, and have written of it
from memory.

276 APPENDIX III

What new side of science are you writing about at
present ?

Yours sincerely,

THOMAS HARDY.

MAX GATE,
20:2:1908.
MY DEAR CLODD,

I must send a line or two in answer to your letter.
What you remind me of the lyrical account of the fauna
of Waterloo field on the eve of the battle is, curiously
enough, the page (p. 282) that struck me,, in looking back
over the book, as being the most original in it. Though,
of course, a thing may be original without being good.
However, it does happen that (so far as I know) in the
many treatments of Waterloo in literature, those particu-
lar personages who were present have never been alluded
to before.

Yes : I left off on a note of hope. It was just as well
that the Pities should have the last word, since, like Para-
dise Lost, The Dynasts proves nothing. *
Always yours sincerely,

THOMAS HARDY.

P.S. The idea of the Unconscious Will becoming
conscious with flux of time, is also new, I think, whatever
it may be worth. At any rate I have never met with it
anywhere. T. H.

MAX GATE, DORCHESTER,

28 :8:I9I4.
MY DEAR CLODDj

I fear we cannot take advantage of your kind invita-
tion, and pay you a visit just now much as in some
respects we should like to. With the Germans (apparently)
only a week from Paris, the native hue of resolution is

APPENDIX III 277

sicklied o 'er with the pale cast of thought. We shall hope
to come when things look brighter.

Trifling incidents here bring home to us the condition
of affairs not far off as I daresay they do to you still
more sentries with gleaming bayonets at unexpected
places as we motor along, the steady flow of soldiers
through here toWeymouth, and their disappearance across
the Channel in the silence of night, and the 1000 prisoners
whom we get glimpses of through chinks, mark these fine
days. The prisoners, they say, have already mustered
enough broken English to say " Shoot Kaiser ! "and oblige
us by playing "God Save the King" on their concertinas
and fiddles. Whether this is "meant sarcastic", as
Artemus Ward used to say, I cannot tell.

I was pleased to know that you were so comfortable,
when I was picturing you in your shirt sleeves with a lot
of other robust Aldeburghers digging a huge trench from
Aldeburgh church to the top of those steps we go down to
your house, streaming with sweat, and drinking pots of
beer between the shovellings (English beer of course).

Sincerely yours,

THOMAS HARDY.

P.S. Yes : everybody seems to be reading The Dy-
nasts just now at least, so a writer in the Daily News
who called here this morning tells me. T. H.

INDEX

"Abbey Mason, The" (poem), 151

Abbotsbury, 164

Abercorn, Duchess of, 6

Aberdeen University, 108-10

"Absolute Explains, The" (poem),
241

Academy and Literature^ the, 96-8,
136

"According to the Mighty Work-
ing" (poem), 190

Adelphi Terrace (No. 8), n

Aerial warfare, protest against
(1911), 149

Agricultural labourers of Dorset-
shire, Hardy on, 93-6

Aide", Hamilton, 21

Aldeburgh, Suffolk, 113-14, 138,

*39> I43> 276
Alexandra, Queen, 139
Allbutt, Sir Clifford, 18, 126, 133, 158
Allen, Grant, 30
Allhusen, Elizabeth, 229
Allhusen, Henry, 53
Allhusen, Mrs. Henry, 187, 229
Almack's (Willis's Rooms), 43-4
American fleet at Portland, 147
American National Red Cross

Society, 86
"And there was a great calm"

(poem), 214-15
"Apology" (preface to Late Lyrics

and Earlier)^ 122, 177, 208, 225
"Appeal to America, An" (poem),

165
Armistice poem, 1920 ("And there

was a great calm"), 214-15
Ashlej Gardens, Westminster, 36
Asquith, Anthony, 239
Asquith, H. H., 108, 152, 157
Asquith, Mrs., 33, 157
Astor, Mr., 30
"At Mayfair Lodgings" (poem), 35

"At the Entering of the New

Year" (poem), 220
Athelhampton Hall, 161
Athenceum, the, 108, 190, 220
Austin, Alfred, 138
Austria, Empress of, 70
Axminster, 164

Baldwin, Stanley, 267

Balfour, A. J., 6, 17, 26, in, 152,
211

Balfour, Colonel Eustace, 119-20

Balfpur, Miss, 6, 152

Balliol Players, the, at Max Gate,
238-9, 247-8, 254

Bankes, Mrs., 249

Barnes, William, 131

Barnes Theatre, Tess at the, 242;
The Mayor of Casterbridge at the,
248

Barrie, J. M., 20, 21, 123, 163, 174,
177-8, 190, 192, 211, 213, 221,
225, 265, 267

Barrie, Mrs. J. M., 123

"Barthelemon at Vauxhall" (son-
net), 224

Basingstoke, 66

B as tow, Henry Robert, 262

Bath, 54, ico, 257 ; the Abbev, 148

Bayard, T. F. (American Ambassa-
dor), 59

Beerbohm, Max, 138, 231; Mrs.,
231

"Belgian Expatriation, On the"
(sonnet), 164

Bennett, Arnold, 163

Benson, A. C., 157, 159, 163, 177

Benson, Monsignor H., 163

Beresford, Miss, 18

Bergerat, Emile, 148

Bergson, Hardy on, 1667, 269,
270-3

279

280

INDEX

Bernard, Dr., Archbishop of Dub-
lin, 191, 192
Berne, 67

Bernhardt, Sarah, 33, 88-9
Bicycling, Hardy's, 83-4, 86, 100,

^107, 121, 12% 143, 227

Birmingham, 150

Birr ell, Augustine, 212

Blanche, Jacques, 119, 123

Blanche, Mme. J., 123

Blandford, 157-8, 191

Blomfield, Sir Arthur, 10-11, 21,

37, 84, 160, 185, 210
Blomfield Court, Maida Vale, 142
Blunden, Edmund, 227
Bockhampton, 28, 198-200, 215,

221, 226, 243, 249, 260, 261, 262,

263
Book of Homage to Shakespeare, A,

171

Boscastle, 156, 172
Boughton, Rutland, 237-8, 239
Bradley, Miss, 83
Braille type, portions of Hardy's

works in, 157
"Bride-Night Fire, The" (poem),

80

Bridges, Dr. Robert, 133, 163, 203
Bridport, 164, 169, 172
Brighton, visit to, 47
Bristol, 100; Cathedral, 148; Uni-
versity confers degree on Hardy,

242
British Museum, the, 74, 85, 107,

1 20, 150

Broadwindsor, 164
Brooke, Rupert, 133
Bruges, visit to, 54-5
Brussels, visits to, 55, 56-7
Bryce, Lord, 211
Buller, Sir Redvers, 28-9
Bunty Pulls the Strings, 152, 153
Bury, Professor, 109, 143, 159;

Mrs., 159

Butcher, S. H., 133
Butler, Dr. (Master of Trinity),

TII, 157
Butler, Mrs., 157

"Call to National Service, A"

(poem), 175
Cambridge, visits to, 121, 133, 159-

160; University confers hon.

degree on Hardy, 156-7

Cambridge Magazine, the, 167
Cambridge Review, the, 158
Camelford, 172

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 33, 43
Canadian Bookman, the, 191
Canterbury Cathedral, 121
Capital punishment, Hardy on, 100
Carlisle Cathedral, 14(8
Carnarvon, Lady, 31
Carnegie, Mr., 120
Carr, Comyns, 140
"Casterbridge" and Dorchester, 144
Cavendish, Lady Dorothy, 211
Cervesato, Dr. Arnaldo, letter to,

90
Chamberlain, Joseph, 47; Mrs., 12,

16

"Channel Firing" (poem), 161-2
Charborough Park, 35-6, 259
Chattaway, Dr., 232
Chester Cathedral, 149
Chichester Cathedral, 139
Child, Harold, 235
Choate, J. H. (American Ambassa-
dor), in

Christian, Princess, 31
Christie's, Red Cross sales at, 167,

171, 186

"Christmas Ghost Story, A", 84
"Christmas in the Elgin Room**

(poem), 264
"Christminster", not Oxford, 49-

50, 249
Church of England, Hardy's feeling

for the, 176-7, 225, 246-7
Clarendon Press, the, 131
CKffe, A. L., 239
Clodd, Edward, 30, 86, 104-5, i*3>

274-6

Cockerell, Mrs., 159
Cockerell, Sydney, 149-50, 157,

ic 9 , 174, 187

Colbourne, Maurice, 196-7
Coleridge, Lord, 14
Collected Poems, 194, 198
Collins, Lottie, 7
"Compassion" (poem), 238
Conrad, Josep ( h, 124
"Convergence of the Twain, The"

(poem), 151

Corbin, Christopher, 268
Cornhill Magazine, the, 84, 101,

108, 1 86
Cosmopolis, 41, 43

INDEX

281

Courtney, W. L., 175

Coutts, Francis (Lord Latymer),

107

Crabbe, 113^14
Crackanthorpe, Mr, and Mrs.

Montagu, 46
Craigie, Mrs. ("John Oliver

Hobbes"), 21, 25-6, 32, 120, 132
Crich ton-Browne, Sir James, 18,

24-5, 126, 190
Criticism, Hardy on literary, 183,

184, 208

"Cross-in-Hand", 164
Curzon, Lord, 26, 29, 132

Daily Chronicle, the, 84

Daily News, the, 276

Daily Telegraph, the, 120

"Darkling Thrush, The" (poem),
87

Darling, Mr. Justice, 195

Dawson of Penn, Lord, 237

"Dead and the Living One, The"
(poem>, 171

"Dead Drummer, The" (poem),
84

"Dead Wessex, the dog to the
household" (poem), 251-2

de Grey, Lady, 33

de la Mare, Walter, 223, 230, 260,
265; Mrs., 230

d'Erlanger, Baron F., 139

de Robeck, Sir John and Lady, 231

de Ros, Lady, 19

Desperate Remedies, 228; drama-
tised, 203, 207

Desspir, Dr. Max, 139

Destinn, Mme., 139

Devonshire, 8th Duke of, 26; 9th
Duke, 211

Diamond Jubilee, the, 66, 67

Disarmament, Hardy on inter-
national, 219

"Distracted Preacher, The" (story
dramatised), 150

Dobson, Austin, 13

Donald, Robert, letter to, 131-2

Donaldson, Dr., 156

Donaldson, Lady Albinia, 156-7

"Doom and She" (poem), 91

Dorchester, 8-9, 22, 98-9, 143-7,
173, 174, 184, 187, 203, 207, 215,
223, 224, 236, 240, 268, 275-6

Dorchester Debating and Dramatic

Society, the, 131, 140, 147, 150,
154,159,215,240
Dorchester Grammar School, 134,

^230, 246, 254-5, 258

He
(tune), 127

"Dorchester Hornpipe, The"

\>uui,/, j.^/

Dorset County Hospital, 224
Dorset County Museum, 160
Dorset Daily Chronicle, the, 98-9
Dorsetshire, Hardy on agricultural

labourers of, 93-6
Dorsetshire Regiment, marching

tune for, 127
Douglas, Frank, 187-8
Douglas, Sir George, 24, 83, 187-8,

197-8 ^

Dover, visit to, 54
Drinkwater, John, 248
"Drummer Hodge" ("The Dead

Drummer"), 84
Dublin, visit to, 18-20
Dufferin, Lord, 25
Dundas, Mr. (A.D.C. at Dublin,

1893), *9
Durham, Bishop of (Dr. Moule),

106, 193-4* 211-12

Durham Cathedral, 139

Duse, Eleanora, 22, 33

Dynasts, The, 25, 56-7, 91, 100, 101,
103-5, io7, 114, "7, 120, 121,
123, 124-6, 127, 127-8, 135, 150,
*57> i?i, 175, 194, 217, 222, 226-
227, 228, 269770, 274-5, 276;
dramatic versions, 131, 135;
Granville-Barker, 104-5, 1 72, 204;
Wessex Scenes, 171-2; O.U.D.S.,
196-7, 201-5

Edinburgh, 139

Edinburgh Rffiew, the, 153

Edward VIE; King, 126, 142

"Egdon Heath", 17, 238, 256

Eighty Club, the, 49

Eliot, Mrs. R., 23

Elton, Godfrey, 232-4

Ely Cathedral, 120

Empire Music-Hall, the, 14

"England to Germany" (poem), 164

English Review, the, I 27

Ermitage, L* (of Paris), 23

Ervine, St. John, 221

Europeen L\ 101

Evans, A. H., 140, 150

Exeter, 214; Cathedral, 149, 169

INDEX

Famous Tragedy of the &ueen of

Cornwall^ The, 230, 235-6, 237,

239
Far from the Madding Crowd, 75,

1 86; dramatised, 140
Farrer, A. A., 239
Faucit, Miss Helen, 126
Fawley, Berks. ("Mary green"), 231
"Fiddler of the Reels, The" (short

story), 15

Fielding, Hardy on 74 ,

"Fire at Tranter Sweatley s, The

(poem), 80

Fisher, Admiral W. W., 231
Fiske,Mr., 59 f _ j

Fitzgerald, Sir Gerald and Lady, 21
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,

149, 150
"Five Students, The" (poem), aii-

212

Flower, Newman, 237

Forbes-Robertson, J., 43

Fordington, 194

Forster, E. M., 227

Fortnightly Review, the, 121, 147,

148, 161, 175, 252
France, Anatole, 159
Franggon-Davies, Gwen, 240, 244
Frazer, Sir James, 143

Galsworthy, John, 163, 212, 230,

258, 267

Galsworthy, Mrs. John, 258
Gardner, Lady Winifred, 16
Garrick Theatre, Tess at the, 242,

243

Gautier, Th6ophile, 148
General Blind Association, 157
Geneva, 70, 71
George, Lieut. F., 261
George V., King, 22, 143, 148, 212,

267
"Georgian poets", Hardy on the,

168
German editors, meeting with

(1906), 120

German prisoners, visit to, 173
Gibbon, 67-9

Gifford, Evelyn, 202-3, 214
Gilder, Miss Jeannette, 50-2
Glasgow University, Hardy asked

to stand for Lord Rectorship of,

Glasgow University Liberal Club, 47

"Glass-stainer, The" (poem), 26
Glastonbury, 108, 239
Gloucester Cathedral, 150-1
Godley, A. D., 201-2
"God*s Funeral" (poem), 147
"Going of the Battery, The"

(poem), 84
Golden Treasury series, the, 173,

258,263

Gorky, Maxim, 124
Gorky, Mme. Maxim, 124
Goschen, G. J. (Lord Goschen), 6
Gosse, Sir Edmund, 13, 108, 190,

267-8

Graham, Lady Cynthia, 26, 33
Granville-Barker, H., 164-5, 172,

204, 211, 231, 239, 252, 253-4, 269
Granville-Barker, Mrs., 231, 239,

253"4

Graphic, the, 84
Great Fawley, Berks., 13
Greer, Mrs,, 18
Grieg, Dr., 118
Grove, Mrs. (Lady), 38, 53
Guinness's Brewery, visit to, 19-20

Haggard, Rider, letter to, 93-6
Halsey, Admiral Sir Lionel, 234
Hamilton Terrace (No. 70), 16, 22
Hanbury, Cecil, 222, 224, 249
Hanbury, Mrs. John, 33
Harcourt, Lewis, 25
Hardy, Mrs. Emma Lavinia, 6, 12,
1 8, 19, 20, 25, 32, 33, 46, 47, 49,
52-3, 56-7, 66, 69, 70, 7*> 72, 74>
84, 85, 86, 89, 113, 119, 123, 132,
139, 147, 151, 153-5, i?3, i 9 ,
229, 231, 237, 262, 267; her Re-
collections, 151, 155
Hardy, Mrs. F. E., 147, 159, 164,
168, 169-70, 171, 172, 173, 177,
178, 191, 192, 195, *97> 20I > 202 >
203, 204, 205, 206, 208-9, 209-10,

211, 213-14, 222, 227, 229, 231,
232, 233, 237, 2 4 0, 2 4 I, 242, 243,
245, 249, 250, 253, 264, 265, 266,
267

Hardy, Mrs. (grandmother), 54
Hardy, Henry (brother), 9-10, 74,

101-2, I20-I, 148, 170, 227, 230,

260-1, 268
Hardy, Mrs. Jemima (mother),

10, ii, 53> 73, 89-90, 106, 231,

237

INDEX

283

Hardy, Katherine (sister), 89, 101-
102, 149, 172, 191, 2", 227, 230,
231, 261, 267

Hardy, Mary (sister), 8, 12, 89, 101-
102, 106, 133, 151, 170, 212, 231,
236, 245, 262

Hardy, Admiral Sir Thomas (cap-
tain of Victory)^ 112, 114, 114 #.,
164

Hardy, Thomas, of Melcombe
Regis (d. 1599), 134, 254-6

Hardy, Thomas (father), 8-9, 9-10,

12, 13, 1 8, 101-2, 106, 197, 231,
263

Hardy, Thomas (grandfather), 10,

13, 101-2

Hardy Dictionary , A> 150

Hardy Players, the, 171-2, 207,

222-3, 236, 2 37> 240
Harper, Henry, 34
Harper's Magazine ', 30, 142, 151
Harrison, Frederic, 80, 158
Hawkins, Anthony Hope, 163, 212
Hawkins, Sir Henry, 14
"He abjures love" (poem), 218
"He views himself as an auto-
maton" (poem), 26
Head, Sir Henry, 264
Head, Mary (grandmother of

Hardy), 231

Henniker, General, 34, 151
Henniker, Mrs. Arthur (Florence),

1 8, 19, 20, 21, 27, 150, 191-2,

214, 227, 230

Hereford Cathedral, 23, 148
Herkomer, Sir Hubert, 133
Newlett, Maurice, 88, 138
Hicks, Mr., of Dorchester, 262
Higginson, Colonel T. W., 71-2
Hind, Arthur M., 247
"His Country" (poem), 162
"His Education" (poem), 217
Ho are, Sir Henry and Lady, 160,

169

Hoist, Gustav, 256
Honours for men of letters, Hardy

on, 114-15

Horses in war, Hardy on, 81
Hospital, visit to wounded in, 173
Houghton, Lord, 18, 19
House of Commons, tea on the

Terrace at, 36
Housman, A. E., 82, 86,
How, Bishop, 49 n.

158, 268

Howard, Hubert, 25
Hugo, Victor, 92
Human Shows> 224, 242
Humanitarian League, letter to the,

141-2
Hyde Park Mansions, no, 117,

123, 126
Hymns, "familiar and favourite",

45 ; Latin, 85-6
Hyndman, Mr. and Mrs., 187

Ibsen, 20-i, 66

"If a madness 'tis to weepe" (old

epitaph), 126
Ilchester, Lady, 187
Ilminster, 257-8
"Imaginative Woman, An" (short

story), 26

Imperial Institute, the, 52-3, 66, 74
"In Memoriam, F. T." (poem), 237
"In the Garden" (poem), 170
"In Time of 'the Breaking of

Nations'" (poem), 171, 178
Institute of Journalists, visit from

200 members of, 112-13
InterTakea, 67
Interviewers, 113
Irving, Sir Henry, 22, in

ackson, Henry, 157
ames, Dr., 159

ames, Henry, 7-8, 46, 138, 167-8
,'ekyll, Mrs., 19
Jeune, Sir Francis, 5, 7, 14, 25, 36,

59, 1 10

Jeune, Lady, 7, 14, 20, 22, 25, 26
36, 53 ; see also St. Helier, Lady
John, Augustus, 253
Jones, Miss (of Girton), 160
Jude the Obscure, 30, 37, 38~43> 44,
46, 48, 49-52, 73, 112, 150, 196,
205, 206, 231, 233, 248-9

Kean, Edmund, Hardy on, 98-9

Keats, 210, 221-2

Kenilworth, visit to, 53

Key, Rev. S. Whittell, letter to,

106-7

Killarney, visit to, 20
King Albert's Book, 164
"King's Soliloquy on the Night of

his Funeral, A" (poem), 142
Kingston Maurward, 224, 240
Kipling, Rudyard, 72, 268

284

INDEX

Knights, the, connections of
Hardy's family, 10, 221

"Lacking Sense, The" (poem), 91
Lake Country, visit to the, 148-9
Lancers, the, danced at Hardy's

request, 224

Land-girls, Hardy on the, 183
Lane, John, 107, 157-8, 213
Lang, Principal Marshall, 109
Lankester, Ray, 18, 34
Lansdowne, Lord, 29
Last, I. G., 149
Last, W. J., 149
"Last Performance, The" (poem),

153
Late Lyrics and Earlier ', 122, 177,

208, 225
Lausanne, 67-9
"Lausanne" (poem), 68-9
Lawrence, Colonel T. E., 236, 239,

249-50
League of Nations, Hardy on the,

2I 3.

Lee, Sir Sidney, in

Lewis, Sir George, 46

Lichfield Cathedral, 148

Liddell, Dr., 22

Life's Little Ironies, 108

Lincoln Cathedral, 120

Literature, 84

"LittleHintock", 185, 247

Litwinski, Dr. L., letter to, 175

Llandudno, 18

Lock, Dr. Walter, 8

"Logs on the Heath" (poem), 170
London, Hardy on, 8, 13; in war-
time, 163, 177-8
Londonderry, Lady, 22, 26, 28, 29,

46, 187

"Looking Across" (poem), 170, 180
"Lost Pyx, The" (poem), 164
Lowell, Miss Amy, 190
Lucy, Sir Henry, 18, 19
Ludlow Castle, 24
Lulworth, legend of Napoleon at, 195
Lulwprth Castle, 258-9
Lushington, Vernon, 118
Lyrics and Reveries, 164
Lyttelton, Alfred, 26
Lyttelton, Mrs., 19, 26, 183

Maartens, Maarten, 21

McCabe, Joseph, letter to, 209-10

MacDonald, Ramsay, 267
Mcllvaine, Mr., 13
Mackail, J. W., 163
Macmillan, Sir Frederick, 18
Macmillan, G. A., 18
Macmillan, Harold, 211
Macmillan, Messrs,, 100, 114, 127,

139, i?3 ? i?8, 225, 242
MacTaggart, Dr., 73-4, 159; Mrs.,

159
Maeterlinck's Apology for Nature,

Hardy on, 96-8
Magdalene College, Cambridge,

Hardy's honorary fellowship of,

157, I5M
Magic, in 1830, n
Mahaffy, Mr., 19
Maitland, Fuller, 158-9
Malmesbury, Lady, 8, 31, 46
Malvern, visit to, 53
Manchester, Consuelo Duchess of,

22, 23, 26

Manchester Guardian, the, 246
Martin, Sir Theodore, 126
Masefield, John, 163, 203, 224-225,

2-33* 2 54

Masefield, Mrs. John, 224, 254
Masterman, C F. G., 163
Matterhorn, the, 69
Max Gate, 10-11, 25, 27, 32, 37, 38,

89, 112-13, 152, 153, 180, 183,

207, 213, 220, 221, 225, 230, 234,
235, 237, 238-9, 2 4 I, 2 4 2, 243-4,
245, 247-8, 250, 251, 254

"Mayfair Lodgings, At" (poem), 35

Mayor of Casterbridge, The, 150,
157 ; film version, 223 ; dramatised
by John Drinkwater, 248

Medico-Psychological Society, 126

Mellstock Club, the, 198-200

Mellstock Quire, The (dramatic ver-
sion of Under the Greenwood
Tree), 147, 184-5, 222

"Memories of Church Restora-
tion" (paper), 119-200

"Men who March Away" (poem),
164, 167

Meredith, George, 30, 37, 83, 105,

^ i35> I37> 169, 257

Meyrick, St. John, 19

Mildmay, Mrs., 25

Mill, J. S., Hardy on, 118-19

Milman, General, 21

Milman, Miss, 21

INDEX

285

Miines-Gaskell, Lady Catherine,
22-4

Minterne, not "Little Hintock",
247

Moments of Vision, 35, 170, 171,
172, 178, 179,211-12

Monteagle, Lord, 108

Montrose, Duchess of, 33, 46

Moore, Dr. G. E., 166

Morgan, Charles, on Hardy's visit
to Oxford (1920), etc., 203-9

Morgan, General J. H., 228-9

Morley, John (Lord Morley), 18,
19, 118, 138, 211

Morning Post, the, 215

Morris, Sir Lewis, 25

Moss, Hardy's dog, 251

Moule, Charles, 159, 189, 211, 221

Moule, Handley (Bishop of Dur-
ham), 1 06, 193-4, 211-12

Moule, Horace, 133, 211-12

MSS., Hardy's, 149-50, 157

Murray, Sir Gilbert, 163

Murray, Sir James, 109, 133, 157

"Napoleon drama, the" (1892), 9

Nation , the, 136

"National Service, A Call to" (son-
net), 175

"Nature's Questioning" (poem),
21^8

Nevill, Lady Dorothy, 36

"New Year's Eve" (poem), 121, 217

New York Tribune, the, 114

New York World,, the, 50-51, 171,
219

Newbolt, Sir Henry, 147, 152, 163

Newnes Library, Putney, 157

Newton, A. E., 186

Nicolson, Mrs. Malcolm ("Laur-
ence Hope"), 108

Nietzsche, Hardy on, 160

"Night of Trafalgar, The" (poem),
167

Nineteenth Century , the, 241

Niven, Dr., 224

"Noble Lady's Tale, A" (poem),
108

North American Review, the, 100-1

Novelists, recent, Hardy on, 158

Noyes, Alfred, 215-18, 219

Oakshott, Walter, 239
O'Brien, Lady Susan, 12-13

Omar Khayyam, 266

Omar Khayyam Club, the, 37

"On Sturminster Foot-Bridge"

(t (poem), 79, 193

"On the Belgian Expatriation"

(sonnet), 164
Order of Merit, conferred on

Hardy, 142-3
Ostend, 54, 56, 57
Ouless, Mr., 224

"Oxen, The" (poem), MS. of, 171
Oxford, visits to, 22, 231-4; and

"Christminster", 49-50, 249;

University confers D.C.L. on

Hardy, 201-2, 205
Oxford University Dramatic So-
ciety and The Dynasts, 196-7, 201,

205

Page, Dr. (American Ambassador),

*57

Pair 0/ Blue Eyes, A,%\
Pathetic Symphony, the (Tchai-

kowsky), in
Patmore, Coventry, 81
Patriotism, Hardy on, 174, 230
Peacock, Sir Walter, 234
"Peasant's Confession, The"

(poem), 74
Peile, Dr., 133
Pembroke, Lord, 29
Pender, Sir John, 18
Perkins, the Rev. T., 123, 237
Pessimism, Hardy on, 183
Petrie, Professor Flinders, 169
Phillpotts, Mr. and Mrs. Eden, 169
"Philosophical Fantasy, A" (poem),

252

"Pink Frock, The" (poem), 31
Piracy, in 1919, 195
Pitt-Rivers, General, 37-8
Pitt-Rivers, Mrs., 31, 37-8
Pittsburgh Institute, 120
Plymouth, 154-5, l $6> *78
Poe, Edgar Allan, 134
Poems of the Past and the Present,

59, 68, 91, 125, 197-8
Poets and poetry, Hardy on, 58-9,

78, 80-81, 85, 92, 178, 184, 185,

1 86, 187, 1 88
"Poets' Tribute" to Hardy, the,

192-3

Pollock, Sir Frederick, 86, in, 198
Portisham, 164

286

INDEX

Portraits and busts of Hardy
(Blanche), 119; (Herkomer), 133;
(Strang), 143 ; (Maitland), 158-9;
(Thornycroft), 167, 244; (Ouless),
224; (Yourievitch), 229; (John),

253

Powis, Lady, 33
Powys, John, 187
Pretor, Mr., 126
Priestley, J. B., 257
Prince of Wales at Max Gate, 234
Proudfoot, Mr., 234
Proust, Marcel, 59, 248
Psalm-tunes, Hardy's selection of

old, 127

Puddletown, n, 256
Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, The, see

Well-Beloved, The

Quain, Sir R., 18
Quarterly Review, the, 7
jiueen of Cornwall, The Famous
Tragedy of the (play), 230, 235-6,

2 37> 2 39
Queen's College, Oxford, Hardy's

Fellowship of, 229; visit to,

231-4
Queen's Hall, concerts at, 88, 107,

iio-n
Quiller-Couch, Sir A., 159, 190

"Rabbi Ben Ezra", 265

Raeburn, Macbeth, illustrator of
the Wessex novels, 35-6

Raleigh, Sir Walter and Lady, 201,
203, 20475, 2 6

Ramsay, Sir J., 1 1 1

Ramsay, A. S. (Master of Mag-
dalene College, Cambridge), 268

Rationalist Press Association, the,

83

Reading, 54
Reason, Robert (original of "Robert

Penny"), 198, 242-3
Reay, Lord, 109
Red Cross sales, Hardy's gifts to,

167, 171, 186
Rehan, Ada, 22
Reims Cathedral, 164
Religion, Hardy's views on, 121-2,

122-3, 175-7
Return of the Native, The, 172, 205,

215, 223, 226, 235
Revue Eleue^ the, 91-2 j

Rhythm in Hardy's poetry, 78-80

Richmond Hill, Hardy on, 90

Rives, Am61ie, 33

Roberts, Lord, 29, 30

Robertson, Professor D. A., letter
to, 185-6

Robins, Miss Elizabeth, 20

"Rome: The Vatican: Sala delle
Muse" (poem), 77

Rosebery, Lord, 22, 49

Royal Academy dinners, 131, 159,
190; private view (1893), 17

Royal Institute of British Archi-
tects, 1 60, 210

Royal Literary Fund, the, 17

Royal Society, the, 18

Royal Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, the, 238

Royal Society of Literature, the,
152, 174

Rugby School, visit to, 149

Russell, Dr. W. H., 33

St. Albans, Duchess of, 132
St. George, The Play of, 220
St. Helier, Lady, 124, 131, 152,

169, 191, 192, 229, 235; see also

Jeune, Lady

St. Juliot, Cornwall, 155, 156, 172
St. Paul's Cathedral, 107
St. Saviour's, Southward, 37
Saleeby, Dr. C W., letters to,

166-7, 269-73

Salisbury, Bishop of (1919), 192
Salisbury Cathedral, 71, 191, 231
Salisbury, Lord, (1892), 6
Sargent, John, 157
Sassoon, Siegfried, 193, 227, 239,

244-5, 254
"Satires in Fifteen Glimpses", see

Satires of Circumstance
Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and

Reveries, 148, 164
Saturday Review, the, 70-1
Savile Club, the, 17, 34
Saxelby, F., 150
Scenery, "the best", 71
"Schreckhorn, The" (poem), 67
Scott, Sir Gilbert, 210
Scribner, Messrs., 15
Seaman, Sir Owen, 163
Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy

(Golden Treasury), 173, 258
Selous, F. C., 29

INDEX

287

Shaftesbury, Lady, 183
Shaftesbury, Lord, 234
Shakespeare, Hardy on, 53-4, 187-8,

207-8
"Shakespeare after Three Hundred

Years, To" (poem), 171, 198
Shakespeare Memorial Committee,

the, 112, 131-2

Shaw, G. B., 123, 124, 236, 268
Shaw, Mrs. G. B., 123, 236
Sherborne, 227
Sheridan, Mrs. A. Brinsley, 25,

183

Shipley, Dr., 108
"Sick Battle-God, The" (poem),

162, 165
Silchester, 66

"Singer Asleep, A" (poem), 141
Slater, John, 160, 210
"Sleep-worker, The" (poem), 91
Smith, Bosworth, 12, 1 8, 133
Smith, Sir Charles Euan, 22
Smith, Rev. J. Alexander, letter to,

86-7

Smith, L. Pearsall, 240-1
Smith, Canon R., 12
Smith, Reginald, 126
Smith, W. F. D., 48
Smyth, Dame Ethel, 261
Society for the Protection of Ancient

Buildings, 119-20
Society of Authors, the, 137-8,

214, 265
Society of Dorset Men, the, 127,

131, 140, 208,241
Somersetshire, visit to, 149
Songs, old Dorset, 34-5
"Songs of Five-and-Twenty Years"

(projected volume, 1892), 3
"Souls of the Slain, The" (poem),

84

South African War, the, 84, 92
Spa, visit to, 56
Spectator, the, 228
"Spectre of the Real, The" (story),

27

Spencer, Lady, 33
Speyer, Charles A., 219-20
Sphere, the, 171

Sports, field, Hardy on, 106-7
Stanley, Miss Dorothy, 53
Stead, W. T., 45, 81
Stephen, Leslie, 67, 75, 83, 88, 105,

118

Stephen, Mr. (of the N.W.R.), 25

Stepniak, 22

Stevens, Alfred, 157-8

Stevenson, R. L., 7-8

Stinsford, 10, 12, 28, 101-2, 106,

I47> 155, 156, 169, I73> 180, 221,

223, 224, 225, 226, 237, 242, 260,

261, 267, 268
Stonehenge, 72
Stracey, Lady, 25
Strang, William, 143
Strangways, Lady Susan, 12-13
Stratford-on-Avon, visit to, 53-4
Strauss, Edouard, 66
Stuart-Wortleys, the, 172
"Sturminster Foot-Bridge, On"

(poem), 79, 193
Sturminster Newton, 172, 222, 225,

227

Suffragists, 123
"Sunday Morning Tragedy, A"

(poem), 127
Swanage, 133, 172; "the King of",

11-12

Swetman (great-grandfather), 58
Swinburne, A. C., 39-40, 41, 60,

82-3, in-12, 136-7, 138, 141,

157, 183; Hardy on, 135-6
Switzerland, visit to, 66-70

Talbothays, see Hardy, Henry

Teck, Duke and Duchess of, 16-17

Teck, Princess May of (Queen
Mary), 16, 22

Tennant, Sir Charles, 49

Tennyson's funeral, 13

Terry, Ellen, 33

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, 3-8, 17, 25,
26, 32-3, 44-5, 50, 59, 86-7, 150;
opera, 139, 143; Hardy's own
dramatic version, 208, 240, 242,
2434

"Then and Now" (poem), 177

Thomas, Sir Godfrey, 234

Thompson, Sir Henry, 36

Thompson, Lady, 117

Thomson, Miss Winifred, 36

Thornton, Douglas, 169

Thorny croft, Sir Hamo, 86, 167,
244~5

Thornycroft, Lady, 244

"Three Wayfarers, The" (dramatic
version of "The Three Stran-
gers"), 20, 150

288

INDEX

Thring, G. Herbert, letter to, 214

Tilley, Mr,, 215

Time's^ Laughingstock*, 121, 137,

139, 140, 217
Times, The, 104, 107, 118-19, 135-6,

137, 149, 164, 177, 203, 214, 224,

229, 237, 238, 242, 264
Tintagel, 172-3; Hardy's drawing

of, 230

Titantic disaster, the, 151
"To C. F. H." (poem), 224
"To My Father's Violin" (poem),

218
"To Shakespeare" (poem), 171,

198

"To the Matterhorn" (poem), 69
Tolstoy, 22, 45, 107
Toole, J. L., 21-2
"Trampwoman's Tragedy, A"

(poem), 92-3, loo-i
Trevelyan, G. M., 163
Trevelyan^ Mr., 18
Treves, Sir Frederick, 126, 169,

187, 236-7

Treves, Lady, 126, 169
Trumpet-Major, The, 157, 227;

dramatised, 154; Hardy's draw-
ing for first edition, 190
Two on a Tower, 35, 259
Tyndale, Walter, 112

"Unborn, The" (poem), 218
Under the Greenwood Tree, 198,

243 ; dramatised, 147
"Unkindly May, An" (poem), 263

Vincent, Sir Edgar, 108
Virginia, University of, 134
Vivisection, Hardy on, 138-9
"Voices from Things growing in a

Country Churchyard" (poem),

223
Vreeland, Admiral (of the U.S.

Navy), 147

Wade-Gery, H. T., 239
Wagner, Hardy on, 117, 118
Wakefield, Bishop of, and Jude, 48-

49
Wales, the Prince of, at Max Gate,

^34
Walker, Dr. E. M. (Pro-Provost of

Queen's College, Oxford), 268
War, Hardy on, 81, 107 ,

War propaganda, conference of
literary men on (Sept. 1914), 163

Ward, Humphry, 18

Ward, Leslie, 7

Warwick, visit to, 53

Warwick, Lord, 53

Waterloo, visit to, 56-7

Watkins, William, 241

Watson, Sir William, 13, 107

Watts-Dun ton, T., 13, in

"Weatherbury" (Puddletown), n

Weld, H. J., 258-9

Well-Beloved, The, 59-61, 108, 248

Wells, H. G., 124, 163

Wells Cathedral, 71

Wenlock, Lady, 24

Wessex (Hardy's dog), 241, 250-2

"Wessex Poems", 58, 75, 76-81, 91 ;
illustrated MS. of, 150

Wessex Scenes from "The Dynasts",
171-2

Wessex Society of Manchester,
motto for, 127

West Central Hotel, the, 152

Westminster Abbey, midnight visit
to, 83 ; Hardy's funeral in, 267-8

Westminster Cathedral, 36

Westminster Gazette, the, 84

Weymouth, 153, i?4> 240, 248, 275

Weymouth, Mass., 248

"When I set out for Lyonnesse"
(poem), set to music, 219-20

Whetham, Dampier, 185

Whibley, Charles, 17, 161
Whibley, Mrs. Charles, 161
Whitefriars Club, the, at Max Gate,

89-90

Whiteing, Richard, 124
Whymper, Edward, 30-1
Wilberforce, Dr., 118
Williamson, Henry, 260
Wilson, Mr., 234
Wimborne, fragment of poem on

the Avenue at, 187
Winter Words, 203
Wireless, 240, 245, 261
Wolff, Sir H. Drummond, 36
Wolseley, Lord, 19
Women Writers' Club, 31
Woodlanders, The, 151-2, 185, 227,

247; dramatised, 159
Woodygates Inn, 191
Woolbridge Manor-House, 17
Worcester Cathedral, 53, 148

Wordsworth's grave, Hardy on, 149
Wright, Edward, letter to, 124-5
Wright, Dr. Hagberg, 124
Wyndham, Charles, 16
Wynnstay Gardens, Kensington,
74,81

Yarborough, Marcia Lady, 31, 33
Yeatman, Dr. (Bishop of South-
war k), 12
Yeats, W. B,, 152

INDEX

Yeovil, 258

289

York Minster, 139
"Young Man's Epigram on Exist-
ence, A" (poem), 217
YourieVitch, Serge, 239
Ysaye, 88

Zangwill, Israel, letter to, 115-16

Zermatt, 69, 70

Zionism, Hardy on, 115-16, 190

03

128328